Auctioned Roman villa with Caravaggio mural draws no bids
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The villa houses the only mural by Caravaggio, which alone is valued at 350 million euros.
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The building has a valuable art collection that includes frescoes by Guercino.
A Roman villa housing the only mural by Caravaggio failed to find a bidder in an auction Tuesday due to a dispute between its heirs.
The villa, Casino dell'Aurora, will be put up for sale again in April, with the base price of 471 million euros ($534 million) lowered by about 20%, according to the notary involved in the sale, lowering the base price from 471 million euros to 376.8 million euros, Verde said.
"Nobody took part in the auction," Camillo Verde told AFP, saying the next sale would take place on April 7 at 2:00 pm Rome time.
The 2,800-square-metre residence of the noble Ludovisi Boncompagni family for hundreds of years, the Casino dell'Aurora, is located in central Rome between the Via Veneto and the Spanish Steps.
The auction was ordered by a Rome court following a dispute among the heirs of Prince Nicolo Ludovisi Boncompagni, the head of the family who died in 2018.
The dispute is between the prince's third and final wife, Rita Jenrette Boncompagni Ludovisi, a 72-year-old American former real estate broker and actress, and the children from his first marriage.
The building is a Baroque jewel with gorgeous gardens and a valuable art collection that also includes frescoes by Guercino.
Almost 35,000 people had called on the Italian government to exercise "its pre-emptive right" to buy the building and the Caravaggio, which alone is valued at 350 million euros, according to a petition on Change.org.
Caravaggio's oil mural
The oil mural by Caravaggio, whose real name was Michelangelo Merisi, dates to 1597 and is located on the ceiling in a corridor on the first floor of the palace.
It depicts Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune with the world at the center, marked by signs of the zodiac.
"It's certainly one of his earliest (works) and is very interesting because the subject is a mythological subject, and Caravaggio painted almost only sacred works," art historian Claudio Strinati told AFP.
The palace was originally an outbuilding on the grounds of the Villa Ludovisi, of which nothing remains today. Its name comes from a Guercino fresco depicting the goddess Aurora, or Dawn, on her chariot.
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