Vittorio Sgarbi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Vittorio Sgarbi
Sgarbi in 2022
Member of the Chamber of Deputies
In office 23 March 2018 – 13 October 2022
Constituency	Emilia-Romagna 2
In office 23 April 1992 – 27 April 2006
Constituency	Cagliari (1992–1994) Calabria (1994–2001) Veneto 1 (2001–2006)
Member of the European Parliament
In office 20 July 1999 – 11 June 2001
Constituency	North-East Italy
Municipal offices Mayor of Arpino Incumbent Assumed office 15 May 2023 Preceded by Renato Rea Mayor of Sutri In office 11 June 2018 – 15 May 2023 Preceded by Guido Cianti Succeeded by Matteo Amori Mayor of Salemi In office 30 June 2008 – 15 February 2012 Preceded by Biagio Mastrantoni Succeeded by Domenico Venuti Mayor of San Severino Marche In office 9 December 1992 – 24 December 1993 Preceded by Alduino Pelagalli Succeeded by Manlio Rossi
Personal details
Born	Vittorio Umberto Antonio Maria Sgarbi (1952-05-08) 8 May 1952 (age 73) Ferrara, Italy
Political party	Renaissance (since 2017)
Other political affiliations	See list
Height	1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Profession	Art critic Academic Writer
Signature

Vittorio Umberto Antonio Maria Sgarbi (born 8 May 1952) is an Italian art critic, art historian, writer, politician, cultural commentator, and television personality. He is president of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Appointed curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, Sgarbi is also a columnist for il Giornale and works as an art critic for Panorama and IO Donna. A popular ecletic and mediatic phenomenon, Sgarbi is well known for his glib, verbal aggressiveness, and insults, which often led to libels.

A multi-time member of the Italian Parliament, Sgarbi is best known for his mayoralty terms in several cities (San Severino Marche, Salemi, Sutri, and Arpino) across different Italian regions (Marche, Sicily, and Lazio). He is also well-known for his many party switches, starting in the Italian Socialist Party in 1990, before switching to the Italian Liberal Party in 1992 and joining Silvio Berlusconi and his centre-right coalition party Forza Italia in 1994, and to other minor liberal and centre-right parties, including founding its own parties in 1999, 2012, and 2017 (The Liberals Sgarbi, the Party of the Revolution, and Renaissance). In 2018, he returned to the 2013-refounded Forza Italia. After a failed Senate bid in 2022, he was appointed undersecretary for culture in the Meloni Cabinet.

Early life and education

Sgarbi was born in Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, in 1952. The son of pharmacists Giuseppe Sgarbi (1921–2018) and Rina Cavallini (1926–2015), he has a younger sister, Elisabetta Sgarbi (born 1956), an Italian film producer and writer. Sgarbi grew up in Ro Ferrarese and attended the Classical Lyceum named after Ludovico Ariosto. Sgarbi then graduated in Philosophy cum laude at the University of Bologna, where he also specialized in History of Art. After his graduation, Sgarbi taught History of Photography (1974–1978) and History of Artistic Techniques (1984–1988) before entering politics in 1992.

Career

An eclectic, controversial, and often discussed character, Sgarbi has built his career around art but also covered heterogeneous roles and positions in different sectors, publishing numerous works. Sgarbi made his debut on national television as an art expert on the Maurizio Costanzo Show on Canale 5. In the 1990s, he had his own show, Sgarbi quotidiani, which was a pun on his name that can be read as "Daily Sgarbi" or "Daily Offences". The show was a 15-minute recapitulation of current events. On a few episodes, Sgarbi furiously attacked the Italian judges working on the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, and criticized the use of preventive detention in prison; in particular, he declared that many people had been arrested without a proper warrant and that some innocent people had been unjustly accused, and denounced what he saw as the excessive power of investigative magistrates, the severe Article 41-bis prison regime, and the damage done to the regional economy by organized crime investigations. He visited Giuseppe Piromalli, a boss of the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, in prison.

In a series of interviews given on 15–19 July 1994 to Avvenire and il Giornale, Sgarbi described the Mani pulite judges, who were working on the Tangentopoli scandal, as murderers and part of a criminal association. Due to the use of those words, Sgarbi was convicted of libel, a sentence that was confirmed by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation; he was sentenced to pay €60,000.

In 1992, the year after Tangentopoli, Sgarbi was elected mayor of San Severino Marche with the Italian Socialist Party and member of the Chamber of Deputies in the Cagliari constituency with the Italian Liberal Party. In 1994, Sgarbi joined Forza Italia, the new-founded party of Silvio Berlusconi. As part of the Pole of Good Government, he campaigned actively in Southern Italy for judicial reforms after Tangentopoli, such as the failed Biondi Decree. As a member of Forza Italia, he carried out much parliamentary activity, including being president of the 7th Culture, Science, and Education Commission of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 1996, elected a member of the European Parliament in 1999, and the undersecretary for cultural heritage and activities from 2001 to 2002. About the state of art in 2002, Sgarbi said: "I don't think cinema and theatre are essential to humanity... No one goes to see Italian films because they stink."

Sgarbi in 2012

In 2006, Sgarbi obtained the culture department of the municipality of Milan, a position he held until 2008. In 2008, Sgarbi served as Cabinet Member for Culture, Arts, and Sports in Milan's municipal government for six months when mayor Letizia Moratti terminated his mandate as she saw him "unfit for the job". That same year, supported by the 2002-refounded Christian Democracy and the Union of the Centre parties, Sgarbi became mayor of the Sicilian city of Salemi, a position from which he resigned in February 2012. In an attempt to re-populate the city since the 1968 Belice earthquake that hit Salemi's ancient centre, parts of which date back more than 1,000 years to the Islamic occupation, under the suggestion of photographer and friend Oliviero Toscani, Sgarbi proposed to give historic houses for €1 each. While mayor of Salemi, Sgarbi was removed from his role and the administration of the city was commissioned after he failed to acknowledge Sicilian Mafia interferences in his cabinet. According to the then interior minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, Sgarbi had responsibilities for the infiltration of mafia in the management of the city, for example through the creation of fake protocols and making the administrative process slower. Sgarbi later recalled it was "a mistake", saying: "The mafia was based on silence; from Buscetta onwards, in Sicily it is archaeology: it is no coincidence that I opened the mafia museum. In your opinion, what is the mafia doing in Salemi? The mafia goes where the money is. In Milan. In Moscow."

During his career, Sgarbi was superintendent for the Venetian Museum Complex from 2010 to 2011 and curator of numerous artistic events, including the 2011 Venice Biennale, where he was appointed curator of the Italian Pavilion. In 2013, he left the presidency of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino, a position he had held since 2003. In 2015, Sgarbi formalized his mayor of Milan candidacy for the 2016 Italian local elections. In February 2016, four months before the election, he renounced to his bid and criticized the centre-right coalition candidate Stefano Parisi. In November 2017, Sgarbi was chosen by the centre-right coalition Sicilian president-elect Nello Musumeci as new Regional Assessor of Cultural Heritage. Sgarbi was re-elected as member of Parliament for Forza Italia for the 2018 Italian general election. With the Renaissance party he founded in 2017, Sgarbi was elected as mayor of Sutri later in June 2018.

Sgarbi was critical of the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy by the government and of the Green Pass. In 2022, he presented the symbol of #IoApro Rinascimento with the group of restaurateurs and traders disobedient to the restrictions imposed by the government and the obligation of the Green Pass. Sgarbi was a candidate to the Senate of the Republic in the 2022 Italian general election but was not elected. In the Meloni Cabinet that ensued, he was undersecretary for culture from 2022 to 2024. In 2023, Sgarbi was elected mayor of Arpino with the Renaissance civic list. As the undersecretary of culture, Sgarbi said in August 2023 that some of Italy's top jobs should be reserved for Italians and that the Meloni government had introduced stricter criteria in the hiring process over the language skills of applicants.

Political party affiliations

Sgarbi in 2019

Sgarbi is well known for his many political parties affiliations. Due to his many party switches, Sgarbi is labelled Italy's greatest trasformista. In his youth, Sgarbi was a member of the Italian Monarchist Union. He was later associated with the Italian Communist Party after accepting the proposal to run for Pesaro's city council in 1990, a candidacy that failed due to having simultaneously also accepted the proposal for the Italian Socialist Party (PSI); this led to the withdrawal of both candidacies. With the PSI, he was elected deputy and municipal councilor of San Severino Marche in 1990. Through a Christian Democracy–Italian Social Movement alliance, he was elected mayor of San Severino Marche in 1992. He was first elected deputy in 1992 through the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), and then re-elected in 1994, 1996, and 2001 with Forza Italia and re-elected in 2018 with the new Forza Italia established in 2013. In 1995, Sgarbi co-founded the Federalist Union, which he left to join the Pannella–Sgarbi List but abandoned it before the 1996 elections, being re-elected with Forza Italia through the Pole of Good Government. He founded a new party, The Liberals Sgarbi, in 1999.

In 2000, Sgarbi established the Secular Pole to guarantee representation in the following year's elections for the PLI and the Radical Party, with which he was allied as part of Berlusconi's coalition in 1996. In 2004, he joined the Italian Republican Party. In 2006, Sgarbi ran for the Consumers' List, which was part of The Union, the centre-left coalition that narrowly defeated Berlusconi, without being elected. In 2008, an alliance between the 2002-refounded Christian Democracy and the Union of the Centre parties led to his election as mayor of Salemi. Sgarbi was the unsuccessful candidate for the Movement for Autonomy in the 2009 European Parliament election in Italy through The Autonomy electoral list in the Italian Islands constituency and for the Liberals Sgarbi Network – Reformists in the 2010 Lazio regional election. On 14 July 2012, the 223th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille at the beginning of the French Revolution, Sgarbi founded the Party of the Revolution – Sgarbi Laboratory, with which he unsuccessfully ran for re-election as mayor of Salemi in May 2014. In 2013, Sgarbi joined the Popular Agreement party of Giampiero Catone. Alongside Giulio Tremonti, Sgarbi founded Renaissance in 2017, initially running for president of Sicily, before switching his support to eventual centre-right coalition winner Nello Musumeci. In 2018, Renaissance federated with Forza Italia but subsequently returned to being an autonomous political group that presented itself at a local level over the years. In 2022, Sgarbi joined the Us Moderates electoral list. In 2023, a common list Us Moderates – Sgarbi Renaissance was presented at the regional elections in Lazio and Lombardy.

Political and religious views

Sgarbi at a pro-American demonstration in 2001

Politically a liberal within the centre-right coalition, Sgarbi is associated with liberal conservatism, federalism, and economic liberalism. He called himself liberale ("liberal") and libertario ("libertarian"), in the mold of Marco Pannella. In 2017, Sgarbi said: "Replacing ideology with culture is the only future for the survival of good politics at the service of good governance. We are witnessing the destruction of the physiognomy of our cities. Beauty, unfortunately, is a legacy of the past; the urban planning objective of modern times seems to be only that of the construction of 'ugly buildings'. We need to go back to the Renaissance, when there was a 'commissioning power' that left free initiative to the artist, the only constraint was that represented by the creation of 'beautiful things'. What many call 'regime art' is 'state art' that preserves the characteristics and feelings of the climate of the current era."

Sgarbi in 2007

Although Sgarbi has strongly defended the role of Catholicism as a foundational element of Italian culture, his relations with faith and religion are complicated. Sgarbi often declared himself Catholic. During a Confronti broadcast, Sgarbi said that he was "proud to be Catholic". In other occasions, he defined himself as atheist.

In February 2019, Sgarbi declared that he believed in the existence of God and that the definitive proof is its art and all the benevolent manifestations of man. He said: "Believing is a form of presumption, at most one can believe one believes. Reason would give no reason: God is unprovable, therefore he does not exist. Demonstration that God exists is only one. ... Art. There is divinity in man because the artist, adding beauty to the world, continues creation. Through art, man immortalizes himself. Dante would say that 'he becomes eternal'." Asked about what is in the afterlife, he replied: "Nothing. No soul remains of Leonardo; there remains the Virgin of the Rocks." In September 2019, Sgarbi stated that he considers himself a cultural Catholic, seeing Christianity more as a philosophy of man than a religion, according to which the idea of God is nothing more than a principle of perfection that pushes men to pursue goals higher.

Art collections

Sgarbi dedicates himself to the collection of ancient books. He has a library with 280,000 volumes, including some ancient and rare ones, such as all the first editions of Giorgio Vasari's writings. He also collected paintings and sculptures with the collaboration of his family members, including his mother Rina Cavallini. The Cavallini–Sgarbi Collection consists of over 500 works; many are paintings, sculptures, and predominantly ancient artefacts of various types. About Silvio Berlusconi's art collection, Sgarbi doubted of its quality and commented that Berlusconi favoured quantity over quality.

Since at least 2022, Sgarbi has been accused of illicit export of works and laundering stolen goods, in particular a 17th-century and Baroque artwork that disappeared from a castle in 2013. This latest investigation, which began in 2024, attracted significant international attention, with many observers pointing to the silence of the prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Sgarbi, who denied the allegations, resigned as undersecretary for culture in February 2024, citing an anti-trust investigation, after he was paid for public events, including books presentations and conferences, despite being a member of Parliament.

Personal life

Sgarbi at the 2020 Venice Festival

Sgarbi never married. He has two recognized daughters (born in 1998 and 2000, respectively) and a son (born in 1988). In 2011, Ancona's Court of Appeal attributed to him the paternity of a third daughter, then thirteen years old, by an opera singer.

In 2019, Sgarbi retired from work due to age limits. He taught for three years as a contract professor at the University of Udine. In 2022, he was appointed due to clear fame as full professor of History of Modern Art at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of the Kore University of Enna; he never served the position due to the age limits. In January 2021, Sgarbi revealed that he had asymptomatic COVID-19 and that he had cancer, from which he healed in June 2021. He again tested positive for COVID-19 in February 2022.

In 1996, he was convicted for the crime of forgery and aggravated and continuous fraud against the state due to the production of false documents and absenteeism in the 1989–1990 period while he was an employee of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, with the qualification of artistic and cultural heritage official of Veneto, and at the time of his participation in the Maurizio Costanzo Show. He received a suspended prison sentence of 6 months and 10 days. Also sentenced to pay 700,000 lire in compensation, Sgarbi justified himself by stating that his absence from the office depended on his commitment to drafting an art catalogue, and spoke of "arbitrary, discretion, and madness" regarding the sentence. In 2016, a sentence of the labour section of the Court of Venice readmitted Sgarbi to service in the roles of the Superintendence of Venice.

Sgarbi is a commentator of association football events. As a Ferrara native, Sgarbi is a supporter of SPAL. He also sympathizes for Juventus due to Omar Sivori. In 2017, he made several comments about football figures, such as Antonio Conte, Luciano Moggi, and Diego Armando Maradona.

On November 17, 2019, he was one of the speakers at the conference entitled "The breaking down of ideological frontiers and the fight against prejudice", organised in the Sala Arpa in Terni by the Grand Orient of Italy, in the presence of Grand Master Stefano Bisi. The other speakers were Paolo Mieli and Mogol. Sgarbi's speech was entitled "Politically correct and politically incorrect."

Upon Maradona's death in 2020, Sgarbi stated that he was his friend and always defended him from criticism, and compared him to Caravaggio. In 2023, he criticized the 15-point penalty issued to Juventus for capital gains.

Electoral history

Sgarbi in 1992

Election	House	Constituency	Party		Votes	Result
1992	Chamber of Deputies	Cagliari		PLI	11,438	Y Elected
1994	Chamber of Deputies	Osimo		FI	21,112	N Not elected
		Calabria			–	Y Elected
1996	Chamber of Deputies	Sacile		FI	28,665	N Not elected
		Calabria			–	Y Elected
1999	European Parliament	North-East Italy		FI	85,070	Y Elected
2001	Chamber of Deputies	Trieste–Muggia		FI	36,710	N Not elected
		Veneto 1			–	Y Elected
2004	European Parliament	Southern Italy		Lib	9,300	N Not elected
2006	Chamber of Deputies	Calabria		LC	–	N Not elected
2009	European Parliament	Italian Islands		LD	22,334	N Not elected
2018	Chamber of Deputies	Acerra		RI	30,596	N Not elected
		Emilia-Romagna 2			–	Y Elected
2022	Senate of the Republic	Emilia-Romagna 3		RI	187,206	N Not elected

First-past-the-post elections

Sgarbi in the 1990s

Works

Sgarbi during a lecture in July 2020

Sgarbi is the author of numerous catalogues, monographs, and books on criticism and art history, including among the latest Viaggio sentimentale nell'Italia dei desideri (2010), Piene di grazia. I volti della donna nell'arte (2011), L'arte è contemporanea, ovvero l'arte di vedere l'arte (2012), Nel nome del figlio. Natività, fughe, passioni nell'arte (2012), Il tesoro d'Italia (2013), Il punto di vista del cavallo. Caravaggio (2014), Il tesoro d'Italia. Gli anni delle meraviglie (2014), Dal cielo alla terra. Da Michelangelo a Caravaggio. Il tesoro d'Italia III (2015), Parmigianino. Tra classicismo e manierismo (2016), La Costituzione e la bellezza (2016, with Michele Ainis), Dall'ombra alla luce. Da Caravaggio a Tiepolo. Il tesoro d'Italia IV (2016), Rinascimento (2017, with Giulio Tremonti), Dal mito alla favola bella. Da Canaletto a Boldini. Il tesoro d'Italia V (2017), Il Novecento. I. Dal futurismo al neorealismo. Il tesoro d'Italia VI (2018), Il Novecento. II. Da Lucio Fontana a Piero Guccione. Il tesoro d'Italia VII (2019), Ecce Caravaggio. Da Roberto Longhi a oggi e Raffaello. Un Dio mortale (2021), Canova e la bella amata e Roma. Dal Rinascimento ai giorni nostri (2022), and Scoperte e rivelazioni. Caccia al tesoro dell'arte (2023).

List of publications

Television

Stencil in Turin referencing Sgarbi's response to Aldo Busi during a television debate

As an opinionist, Sgarbi took part in various television programs, including those of Maurizio Costanzo (Maurizio Costanzo Show) and Mike Bongiorno (Telemike). As a presenter, he hosted Sgarbi quotidiani (1992–1999) and Ci tocca anche Vittorio Sgarbi – Or vi sbigottirà (2011). In 2000, Sgarbi quotidiani was awarded the Premio Internazionale Flaiano per la Televisione.

TV shows

• Sgarbi quotidiani (Canale 5, 1992–1999)
• Dalla vostra parte (Rete 4, 2018)
• Cartabianca, (Rai 3, 2018)

Cinema

• Paparazzi (1998), directed by Neri Parenti (cameo)
• Burning Love (2015), directed by Alberto Caviglia (cameo)
• The Blue Kiss (2015), directed by Pino Tordiglione (cameo)

See also

• Antonio Scurati
• Generoso Pompa
• Giuseppe Biagi (painter)
• Lea Vergine