Leon Levi / Leone Levi

Description

Leon Levi (Leone Levi) was an Italian-born art dealer involved in the sale and exportation of artwork from Spain during the early decades of the twentieth century. He became widely known to the Spanish public following the removal of the mural paintings from San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria), an operation in which he played a key role. Levi leveraged his network of contacts to acquire and export valuable artworks from Spain, many of which eventually ended up in various private collections or museums, particularly in the United States. He generally acted as an intermediary for prominent international antique dealers. Levi's operational base in Spain was in Barcelona, where he resided. During the judicial proceedings that followed the sale of the San Baudelio de Berlanga murals, Levi presented himself to the Directorate General of Fine Arts as "a widower, an antique dealer by profession, residing at Plaza Letamendi, 36, Barcelona." Although Barcelona served as his Spanish headquarters, his business demands required frequent travel. As a result, he was seldom personally served with court documents during the proceedings concerning the San Baudelio murals. He moved from his residence on Plaza Letamendi to the Cisneros Pension, and it was usually his daughter, María Levi Rossi, who collected the court documents, as Levi was often traveling, navigating the breadth of Spain in search of artworks (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, vol. II, pp. 339).

In addition to his residence in Spain, the same author documented some of Levi's transactions across Castile and León. For example, between 1912 and 1919, he acquired various ornaments, tapestries, carpets, and other religious objects from the dioceses of Burgo de Osma, Burgos, and Segovia. He typically presented himself to ecclesiastical authorities as a manufacturer of fabrics and ornaments available for sale to churches in exchange for older items; from there, he would make offers on artworks held within the various dioceses. In 1922, he was documented in three locations: San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria), San Esteban de Gormaz (Soria), and the Vera Cruz of Maderuelo (Segovia), where he attempted to acquire the mural ensembles of these chapels, succeeding in the first of these transactions. During the legal process following his acquisition of the San Baudelio paintings, he displayed a rather arrogant demeanor, boasting of his influence and high-level contacts. The Leone Levi firm was founded in Venice in 1902 (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, vol. II, pp. 336–342).

The removal of the San Baudelio paintings brought Levi into the public eye in Spain, when, until that point, like many antique dealers and agents in the trade, he had conducted his activities with a high degree of discretion. Even the poet Gerardo Diego dedicated some verses to him:

"—It was just a dream, my son.
—No, they were there,
I saw them,
the elephants.
They are gone now but they were there before.
(And a Jew took them,
profile of a maravedí)."

The art historian and senator Elías Tormo sketched a portrait of Levi from the parliamentary tribune, prompted by the events surrounding San Baudelio, expressing sharp criticism of Levi’s activities in Spain: "...Mr. Leon Levi, already known in many major, lamentable stories of the pillaging of Spain’s artistic treasures, was the one who, with a blank check from Emperor Frederick— a blank check that he estimated at nearly a million francs—acquired the famous and splendid Monforte altarpiece, which is now one of the glories of the Berlin Museum" (Santonja, 1994, p. 53). Tormo's statement referred to the controversial sale and export of The Adoration of the Magi by Hugo Van der Goes, known as the Monforte Altarpiece, from Monforte de Lemos (Lugo), currently housed in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin—just one of the numerous transactions carried out by Levi in Spain during those early decades of the twentieth century.

Bibliography

• HERNANDO SEBASTIÁN, Pedro Luis (2018): "Vendedores, coleccionistas y marchantes de arte. El patrimonio aragonés emigrado en los museos y colecciones de Estados Unidos", en El patrimonio histórico-artístico aragonés fuera de Aragón, Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza, Institución "Fernando el Católico", Zaragoza, p. 148.
• MARTÍNEZ RUIZ, María José (2008): La enajenación del patrimonio en Castilla y León (1900-1936). II, vol. 2, Junta de Castilla y León, Salamanca.
• SANTONJA, Gonzalo (1994): "Lo que se llevaron de esta tierra", El Norte de Castilla.
• SANTONJA, Gonzalo (2004): Museo de niebla: el patrimonio perdido de Castilla y León, Ámbito, Valladolid.
• SELIGMANN, Germain (1962): Merchants of art: 1880-1960. Eighty years of professional collecting, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Nueva York.