Silvio Berlusconi's heirs inherited a media empire worth billions of dollars, along with a vast portfolio of properties, after he died in June. They also inherited a huge collection of mostly worthless art. Berlusconi, Italy's longest-serving prime minister, reportedly bought around 25,000 paintings in the last years of his life and art experts say only a handful of them have any value. "He liked to buy portraits of women he gave as gifts to friends. When he was younger, he bought at galleries and from dealers, but later in life he bought from TV auctions," London-based art dealer Cesare Lampronti, a close friend of Berlusconi's for decades, tells the BBC. "He knew what he was buying was worthless."
Art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, another close friend, says the 86-year-old starting buying from TV auctions during "sleepless nights" in 2018, the Guardian reports. The collection, which includes religious paintings and paintings of nude women, is housed in a warehouse near Berlusconi 's Milan mansion and costs $850,000 a year to maintain, according to La Repubblica. Berlusconi's five children are believed to be planning to destroy the vast majority of the collection, though woodworms have already done some of the work for them. "I don't know if the destruction of those paintings has already started," Sgarbi says. "I do know that, at least on an artistic level, it wouldn't be a crime." (More Silvio Berlusconi stories.)
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