Yahoo News Hollywood legend Gina Lollobrigida ‘swindled out of art and antiques’ worth €300,000
Italian prosecutors are investigating claims that Gina Lollobrigida, a former Hollywood diva and one of the biggest names in Italian film, has been swindled out of €300,000 worth of art and antiques by her former assistant.
The actress, who appeared in Hollywood blockbusters with the likes of Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Anthony Quinn and Frank Sinatra, claims that 350 of her artworks, sculptures and pieces of furniture were put up for auction without her permission.
She says they were put up for sale by Andrea Piazzolla, her 33-year-old former assistant.
Prosecutors are investigating whether he took advantage of the former star’s advanced age – she is 93 – to bamboozle her into selling the collection.
Investigators allege that he conned her into signing three contracts agreeing to sell the items, “abusing her state of vulnerability”.
They suspect him of engaging in what they call “predatory behaviour” to take the art, antiques and furniture from her home on the Via Appia Antica or Appian Way, an ancient Roman road that leads out of the capital and which is lined with expensive villas.
The young man had managed to “transform himself into the only point of reference between Ms Lollobrigida and the outside world,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
Mr Piazzolla has denied any wrongdoing, saying that he was clearing the house out to make room for refurbishment work.
The items that were put up for sale included antique tables, mirrors and wardrobes, as well as chandeliers, clocks, footstools, carpets, marble busts and paintings.
An oil painting called “Venere e Amore” or “Venus and Love”, by an 18th century French artist, was sold for around €14,000.
“If you had told me that all my prized possessions were up for sale I would have felt great sadness,” the actress, affectionately known to Italians as “La Lollo”, told prosecutors in Rome.
The possessions that were sent to auction included “many sacred icons to which I was particularly attached. I would never have got rid of them because I believed that they protected me,” she said.
The alarm was first raised in May last year by her only son, Andrea Milko Skofic, who told the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s finance and customs police force, that he feared his mother was being exploited.
Ms Lollobrigida was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1950s and 1960s.
She made her first Hollywood film, Beat the Devil, with Humphrey Bogart in 1953 and starred in Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner.
One of her biggest hits was the 1955 production “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo”, or The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. She also appeared with Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
She was often compared with two other sultry Italian actresses of the era – Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale. After retiring from acting, she established a career as a sculptor and photographer.
