The Good. The Bad. The Ugly. Inside Berlusconi’s Art Collection.

As his political fortunes sank, his authorized and love life tangled, and his age caught up with him, Silvio Berlusconi stayed up late in his mansion exterior Milan calling the hotlines of late-night artwork buying tv channels.

It didn’t actually matter what the oil portray and antiques distributors hawked. Landscapes. Sculptures. Portraits. A fair proportion of nudes. Night after night time, after which 12 months after 12 months, the octogenarian media mogul and former prime minister who wished to have all of it tried to purchase all of it, amassing an infinite assortment of all of the mail-order artwork he might lay his bleary eyes on.

“He had this project to build the largest collection in Italy,” mentioned Giuseppe De Gregorio, a televendor close to Naples who bought 1000’s of work to Mr. Berlusconi. “He didn’t want important paintings. He wanted paintings. It was enough if they were painted with oil on a canvas.”

Now, months after Mr. Berlusconi’s dying at age 86, his heirs are determining who will get what in his sprawling empire. Despite the understanding amongst a few of Mr. Berlusconi’s supplier buddies that his heirs wish to unload the artworks, his household mentioned in an announcement that they’re in no rush to divide up the estimated 25,000 work that one skilled who noticed the gathering believes the mogul spent about $20 million on.

The work at the moment are stashed in an infinite hangar that critics have characterised as a form of Raiders of the Lousy Art warehouse. The rumors of fires within the constructing are “unfounded,” they mentioned. The household declined a request to go to the positioning.

Mr. Berlusconi had collected some masters over time, together with items by Titian and Parmigianino, and the villa he purchased within the Nineteen Seventies in Arcore, exterior of Milan, included a decent artwork assortment. But his current acquisitions consisted of much less notable works.

He emptied Mr. De Gregorio’s retailer of round 7,000 work and different items — ranging in value from 100 euros to 2,000 — principally shopping for works on the decrease finish by dwelling painters. There have been road scenes of Paris and Venice, battles and fields of flowers, and plenty of Madonnas.

“He loved Napoleon,” Mr. De Gregorio mentioned, recalling that Mr. Berlusconi purchased a portray of the French emperor studying a letter, and confirmed him that he put the work in a room that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia slept in when he stayed over. The former prime minister didn’t shy from a colourful palette or an extra of pores and skin. A photograph of the warehouse revealed within the Italian media confirmed a wall of contemporary day nudes, like an enormous calendar of oil-painted Playboy centerfolds.

“A compendium of different genres,” mentioned Lucas Vianini, a televendor, artwork historian and subsequently actuality tv character, whom Mr. Berlusconi ultimately employed as a live-in curator of the gathering.

Some of Mr. Berlusconi’s work have been rigorously packaged and personally signed as items to buddies, political allies, foes and frenemies, together with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who reportedly acquired a picture of a mom with baby.

But he left behind an enormous sufficient assortment of hotel-lobby schlock to draw mockery from critics, protection from household and musings from confidantes about why on earth Mr. Berlusconi went on his Citizen Kane-like buying spree.

“It is a mystery what goal he had to build this kind of amusement park,” mentioned Vittorio Sgarbi, an artwork historian, deputy tradition minister and a longtime good friend, who mentioned that “after the famous Bunga Bunga parties,” Mr. Berlusconi began “this sort of frenzy to collect on television.”

He mentioned he had urged Mr. Berlusconi to rein it in, telling him he should purchase a couple of good works as an alternative. And he mentioned he had warned the previous prime minister’s eldest daughter, Marina — who Mr. Sgarbi mentioned was “worried” — that her father wanted to be stopped. “There was a real desire to accumulate,” Mr. Sgarbi mentioned. “It’s inexplicable.”

But the artwork historian gave it a shot, drawing a connection between Mr. Berlusconi’s seeming need to dwell endlessly and his gathering mania. As lengthy as he might preserve buying, Mr. Sgarbi recommended, Mr. Berlusconi might think about he might carry on dwelling.

“I don’t know if he ever thought he would die, this accumulation was like buying up everything while he could, a sort of horror vacui,” he mentioned, utilizing the Latin for “fear of an empty space,” usually utilized in artwork. “‘I don’t have much time,’” he added, imagining what he supposed was Mr. Berlusconi’s pondering, “‘so I’m taking whatever I can, without selecting.’”

The shopping for crammed Mr. Berlusconi, he mentioned, with the need to turn into “the greatest collector in the world, but it was a problem, and his collection was a sort of great illusion.”

Mr. De Gregorio mentioned Mr. Berlusconi was obsessed by and commissioned a number of variations of the legendary allegory of “Selene and Endymion,” the story of a good-looking shepherd, saved endlessly younger in an everlasting sleep throughout which the smitten moon goddess had her means with him. “He loved,” Mr. De Gregorio mentioned, that “the shepherd was immortal.”

To hear it from the televendors, the story of Mr. Berlusconi’s gathering was much less that of an outdated man making an attempt to stave off mortality with stuff, than a lover of life who wished to fill his villas, gardens and ultimately a warehouse, with the work that made him comfortable and confirmed who he was.

“Very ambitious and somewhat extreme,” Mr. Vianini mentioned of the gathering, which he has additionally referred to as a “leitmotif of his existence.”

Mr. Berlusconi first referred to as in to Mr. De Gregorio’s late night time buying hotline in 2019. The vendor recalled that he hung up on him 3 times. “I thought it was a joke,” he mentioned.

When his id was verified, “the entire studio froze,” he recounted. Mr. Berlusconi purchased a bunch of work depicting Canadian mountains within the snow. “And from there began an adventure that lasted three years,” Mr. De Gregorio mentioned.

Mr. De Gregorio hand-delivered the work, which Mr. Berlusconi informed him have been “even more beautiful in real life.”

He went to see Mr. Berlusconi usually, getting a tour of the extra refined image gallery contained in the Arcore mansion. Often, Marta Fascina, Mr. Berlusconi’s girlfriend and 50 years his junior, watched them unpack the products. (Mr. Sgarbi, the artwork historian, mentioned she supported her boyfriend’s pastime.) Mr. De Gregorio would spend the day with Mr. Berlusconi, he mentioned, speaking photos and the artwork world, and consuming lunch and dinner. “He also liked the company, ” the televendor mentioned.

Some televendors, together with Alessandro Orlando, a veteran of the trade, mentioned Mr. Berlusconi chosen his work and antiques “like a surgeon.” He carried out a minimum of 3,000 operations, spending about 2.5 million euros, over a pair years, Mr. Orlando mentioned, shopping for what he supplied.

Mr. Orlando, too, frolicked in Arcore. More than as soon as, he mentioned, Mr. Berlusconi informed him, ‘Alessandro, come, I’ll present you the Bunga Bunga room.’” He mentioned he declined.

He welcomed Mr. Berlusconi to his gallery in Brescia a half dozen instances, and as soon as obtained an advisory name from the weight-reduction plan billionaire’s physician to not feed him. Mr. Berlusconi took a seat of honor because the gallerist slid the canvases via a show case, like an enormous slide present. Mr. Berlusconi picked out those he favored as they glided by.

“He loved a collection of Russian artists I had and wanted to give them as a gift to Putin,” Mr. Orlando mentioned. In the top, Mr. Berlusconi determined to maintain them for himself. Those works didn’t value a lot, however for Mr. Berlusconi cash didn’t appear to matter. “A painting could cost 500 euros or 150,000 euros,” Mr. Orlando mentioned. “There was no difference.”

Mr. Berlusconi turned particularly keen on one in all Mr. Orlando’s salesmen, Mr. Vianini, placing him — and ultimately his sister — up within the luxurious Villa Gernetto, near Arcore. From there, carrying a swimsuit in a rococo room, Mr. Vianini carried out “The President’s Collection,” a showcase produced by Mr. Berlusconi’s Mediaset channel, of work he referred to as of “great value.”

At one level the gathering appeared to get out of hand even for Mr. Berlusconi. Once phrase had gotten out that the previous prime minister was shopping for in bulk, artwork distributors, principally from Naples, began sending vans as much as Arcore, and Mr. Orlando recalled seeing staff unload a whole bunch of work, together with vibrant nudes, within the hope of a sale.

“‘Silvio, how much stuff have you bought?’” Mr. Orlando recalled asking Mr. Berlusconi.

Late in Mr. Berlusconi’s life, in his last run at politics, his work turned presents to purchase favor in a marketing campaign for president of Italy that went nowhere. As he hid an finally deadly sickness, the nice collector “married” Ms. Fascina in a pretend ceremony and settled for a peripheral position as a cantankerous junior companion in a brand new authorities.

Mr. De Gregorio attended his funeral in June and recalled a person who beloved life and the pleasures that made it price dwelling, together with shopping for an OK oil off the tv after midnight.

“He had his own dedicated phone line,” mentioned Mr. De Gregorio, including, “he bought a lot.”