Word: bequestioned
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...collection has been sequestered while the heirs haggled with the legal authorities about its status. Early this year, at long last, the dispute was finally resolved. The result was a bequest to the city of Florence of 15 ceramic plaques from the della Robbia workshop, 38 pieces of Tuscan Renaissance furniture, 43 prime specimens of majolica and Hispano-Moresque faïence ware, twelve sculptures (capped by Bernini's small but superbly fashioned St. Lawrence on the Grill), and 35 paintings that any museum would be proud to own. Late this month they will go on display...
...years, anything went. To eke out their meager stipends, parish priests could (and did) sell a 14th century predella out of the back door of their church for a few lire. The art market was full of floating masterpieces at whose origins dealers winked. The outstanding picture in the bequest, Sassetta's Our Lady of the Snow, is arguably the greatest surviving work by this unprolific Sienese master and worth, according to a spokesman at Christie's, "about $1,500,000." But it was stolen 60 years ago from the high altar of the church at Chiusi, near...
...bequest to Florence is particularly remarkable for its early-Renaissance works, of which all too few survive. Of the best among them is a St. John the Baptist by the early Florentine master Giovanni del Biondo. The saint's grim, forbidding mien reflects the panic of religious doom that fell on Tuscany at the time of the plague, but the man stands, feet implacably planted athwart the body of Herod, in symbolic triumph. With the gift of Contini-Bona-cossi's St. Jerome, Florence will have one of the half-dozen finest small Bellinis to be seen anywhere...
Large Bite. The hassle about the bequest derives from the fact that the count was intent on leaving a memorial to himself in his own homeland, but the state insisted on a large tax bite for itself. He died (in 1955) before the issue was settled, but in his will he directed that his heirs should find some way of giving part of his collection to the state. Negotiations between family and state dragged on for 14 years. Part of the deal is that the family's half could be sold outside Italy without the 30% duty imposed...
Charles Reid, a member of a special mayor's committee for easing tensions in the ghetto, reported seeing one suspected looter shot repeatedly in the back by a black policeman and his white partner. By midevening, Chief Bequest was asking for outside help to bolster his 130-man force, and Governor Lester Maddox responded by sending in 100 state troopers and 200 members of the Georgia National Guard; another 1,000 Guardsmen arrived the following day. By morning, most of the violence was over...