La Dante Monaco: Meeting with Simone Facchinetti and his book “Il Mercato dell’Arte. Le Regole del Gioco”

The art market and all the mechanisms surrounding it will be the focus of the event organized by Dante Alighieri of the Principality of Monaco – under the High Patronage of H.S.H. Princess of Hanover and with the Patronage of the Embassy of Italy in the Principality – to be held on Wednesday, February 26, at 6:30 PM at the Auditorium Rainier III in Monaco (free entry).

Simone Facchinetti, Associate Professor of Modern Art History at the University of Salento, author of numerous books including the recent The Art Market – The Rules of the Game (Allemandi 2023), and curator of national and international exhibitions, will reveal “the rules of the game” and the tricks of the trade. Among the exhibitions he has worked on, Facchinetti contributed to the Antonello da Messina exhibition at MART in Rovereto and curated shows at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, where he resides. In 2014, he co-curated the monographic exhibition on Giovanni Battista Moroni at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in 2016, with Arturo Galansino, In the Age of Giorgione at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2019, Facchinetti, along with Arturo Galansino and Aimee Ng, curated the exhibition on Giovanni Battista Moroni at The Frick Collection in New York.

Alfredo Pallesi, an art expert from the Principality of Monaco, will introduce the distinguished guest. Pallesi, with his Art Gallery located at the Park Palace, participates in major national and international art exhibitions. Born in Bologna into a family of antique dealers, Pallesi has been an art dealer since 1968, when he opened a studio in Via del Babuino, Rome. In the 1980s, he began collaborating with Finarte, eventually becoming the general director of all artistic departments in 1999. In 2002, he opened his gallery in Rome on Via Margutta, which he moved to the Principality of Monaco in 2011.

This meeting with Simone Facchinetti will take the Monegasque public on “an exciting journey into the world of the art market, between auctions, dealers, and collectors, but also an investigation into the rules of the game that govern the mechanisms of a magnificent obsession,” as the book itself states.

Simply browsing through the themes addressed in the seven dense chapters reveals that buying a painting or a work of art is not always a trivial undertaking.

“It is the price that makes the artwork, or is it the artwork that makes the price?” Facchinetti asks in the book, and then answers: “Estimates reveal many things, you just need to know how to read them.” The expert also advises: “Beware of restoration” and warns buyers: “What’s under the repainting?”

The author also delves into a very current issue, summarized in the chapter titled “Fetishes of the Mona Lisa: A Widespread Speculative Phenomenon.” But the book doesn’t shy away from describing dramatic cases like the one that titles the paragraph “Fake Botticelli; No, Real! The (Almost) Incredible Story of a Rediscovered Portrait” or “The Half-Sister of the Mona Lisa: The Surreal Story of a Million-Dollar Heist.”

Simone Facchinetti also dedicates space in the book to female painters and even to Napoleon memorabilia, reconstructs deals and “scams,” and finally answers a question that often crosses the minds of buyers: “Is it advisable to buy unsold works?” Concluding with the advice: “It’s always best not to follow the herd.”

For reservations: info.dantemc@gmail.com
Tel. +377 97 70 89 47