History for Sale

ITALY HOLDS one of the most extensive artistic and archaeological heritages in the world, but it is also consistently described by international policing bodies as a major source of forgeries and illegally trafficked artworks. The provenance of a single artwork or a crated relic often weaves together beauty, deception and fights for justice over a span of decades or even centuries. Every year, thousands of cultural objects are stolen from churches, museums, private collections and archaeological sites. According to the annual report of the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, or the Carabinieri TCP, Italy’s specialised police force for tackling crimes related to art and antiquities, more than eighty thousand cultural assets, including archaeological artefacts such as coins and ceramics, paintings, sculptures, rare books and ancient manuscripts, collectively valued at €129.6 million, were recovered in 2024 alone. At the same time, a thriving market for art forgeries fuels a shadow economy, involving complicit galleries, careless collectors and skilled forgers. Matteo Bastianelli’s photographic reportage, spanning the regions of Sicily, Campania and Lazio, investigates the phenomenon of art-trafficking and the production of fakes in the country, the exceptional density of whose archaeological heritage has long made it a site of interest for trafficking networks.

Bastianelli’s project delves into the darkest folds of European cultural legacy, where history itself risks vanishing in the shadows of crime. Many of the crimes his photographs trace took place between the late 1970s and the present, making them impossible to document in real time. “I turned to landscape and aerial photography, while also following my instinct, trying to trace the absence left behind, photographing what tomb raiders did to these places, how they altered them, and how they destroyed frescoes and works of art,” he told The Caravan. In Pompeii, for instance, where he collaborated with the archaeological park authorities, tomb raiders had dug clandestine tunnels over the course of decades, beneath the Civita Giuliana villa, in the suburb of the ancient city. A carabinieri officer told Bastianelli that frescoes, possibly depicting the labours of the mythical hero Hercules, had been looted from the villa.