What started as one banker’s obsession is now an €850 million asset — and a powerful branding tool
The first work of art Milanese banker Raffaele Mattioli bought was a small painting composed on the lid of a cigar box.
It was by one Giovanni Boldoni (1842 — 1931) and it depicted another artist hard at work in his studio. It is perhaps not a work of any great merit, but it lit a spark in Mattioli who became an obsessive collector of regional art. In the years between becoming managing director of Banca Commerciale Italiana in 1936 and his retirement in 1972 he acquired hundreds of works which he hung in the bank’s elegant offices on the Piazza della Scala in Milan.
He not only brought an air of refinement to the establishment but it was also good for business for Mattioli, who was known as “the humanist banker” for saving a struggling publishing firm and helping Jews during Italy’s fascist era, was driven as much by his commercial instincts as his passion to celebrate Italy’s artistic heritage.
He even employed a professor of philosophy to oversee the bank’s aesthetic potential.
Here was the happy meeting of art and mammon and one which has been replicated by banks from the 15th century when Florence’s Medici family spent their immense wealth on the arts, endowing churches, chapels and cathedrals as well as sponsoring artists such as Donatello, Botticelli and Michelangelo.
Then as now, the arts were seen as a crucial marketing tool to promote an image redolent of wealth and shrewd judgement, while, by way of a bonus, guaranteeing a sound investment.
The clients of Morgan Chase must be impressed that their bank owns a Picasso or two and spent $8 million on a Roy Lichtenstein in 2001. How reassuring it must be to know that Barclays Bank owns one of the most valuable collections in the world, including David Hockney, Bridget Riley, and Eduardo Paolozzi as well as Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, aka the shark in formaldehyde, which was sold to an individual in 2006 for at least $8 million (£6.3 million).
If validation is needed that art and money is a marriage made in the boardroom, here’s Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock investment company who said: “The two greatest stores of wealth internationally today include contemporary art … and I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean that as a serious asset class. And two, the other store of wealth today is apartments in Manhattan, Vancouver and London.”
To prove the point, according to the Deloitte Art & Finance Report of April 2024, the value of collectibles globally, including art, is projected to grow from $2.17 trillion in 2022 to $2.86 trillion by 2026.
That’s a perspective which might have eluded Signor Mattioli who died long before his bank was subsumed in 1999 into one of Italy’s newest and biggest banking operations, Intesa Sanpaolo.
Happily, the take over has not only preserved his collection but stayed true to his ethos by transforming the old bank from what was a building of business into a building of culture, the Gallerie d’Italia. The bank has opened a further three galleries, in Naples, Vicenza and Turin, and owns 35,000 artworks, including, mirabile dictu, a Caravaggio. During one of the many take overs which led to the formation of the current organisation it transpired that a painting which had hung unremarked in the boardroom of a Naples bank was none other than The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula painted by the great man in 1610 and shown at London’s National Gallery last year. (2024)
The Gallerie d’Italia in Turin, is a triumph of reconstruction. The Palazzo Turinetti which houses the art collection was bombed in World War Two and rebuilt using wooden panelling, stucco work, gilt mirrors, furniture and tapestries, taken from nearby palaces which had been reduced to rubble.
But the real focus of the gallery is underground where a vast white cube of a space is given over to photography — at present Italian Olivo Barbieri. Other Spaces with his with dramatic “helicopter” shots of Chinese city life alongside a retrospective of Carrie Mae Weems. The Heart of Matter which includes Preach, a project exploring the role of religion and spirituality among Americans of African descent.
One floor down a basement is lined with steel filing cabinets containing seven million photographs from the 1930s to the 1990s which were acquired from an Italian photo agency.
All this, the photographs, the Romantic paintings, the rebuilt galleries, are part of the bank’s Progetto Cultura, a scheme to promote the bank’s commitment to the arts and to the philanthropic schemes which accompany it.
Clearly that can do no harm to the company image but it would be naive to think this is not part of a brand building enterprise. After all, this is a bank. Its aim is to make money. In December 2023 Intesa Saopaolo announced assets of €963,570 million (£802,305m) and in an unusual move put a price on its collection of €850 million (£707,822).
So where does money, art and philanthropy meet? Indeed, does it meet? Is it merely an exercise in brand imagery? Presumably the Bank’s board reckon their image will be enhanced by being the lead sponsor of the ravishing Siena: The Rise of Painting at London’s National Gallery?
First, a history lesson from Michele Coppola, Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historical Heritage at Intesa Sanpaolo.
“The present bank is the result of 600 mergers and acquisitions going back to 1563 when a brotherhood, the Compagnia di San Paolo was formed in Turin to give poor people access to loans with reasonable interest rates without going to exploitative lenders. It was more like a pawn shop than a bank, the borrowers offered valuables as collateral.”
“In 1823, a savings bank Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde was created by an Italian philanthropic group to help people in what were hard economic times.”
As the empire grew, so too the collections. “Our history is the living part of our being, of our brand,” says Coppola. “ Now we are contemporary philanthropists, supporting art and culture.”
But how is the project any different from the global banks with their fabulous art collections and expensive sponsorships?
Compare the Italian bank’s approach with that of Swiss-based multinational UBS which has more than 40,000 paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and installations.
Much fuss was made by their London office, a triumph of corporate aggrandisement, when one of Rana Begum’s floaty, delicately coloured confections from her Mesh Cloud series was commissioned. Disappointingly, this gesture to “engage” with the passing public was impaired by being partly hidden from street view by a pillar.
A dazzling neon and glass sculpture by Cerith Wyn Evans hangs over the foyer, a Tracey Emin and a Michael Craig-Martin, there’s a glimpse of a series by Gary Hume on the mezzanine, but there is no attempt to match the New York office which does at least share some of its collection by staging free exhibitions such as the current Lucian Freud: Works from the UBS Art Collection.
All this is unashamedly part of the business infrastructure. The art not only cheers up otherwise bland offices but helps create a bond between bank and clients. Works are rolled out to decorate the UBS lounges at Art Basel, which the bank has long-time sponsored and as for the rest, well, there are 700 branches around the world and that’s a lot of walls to fill.
This is typical of the way most banks capitalise on their billion dollar collections. Take JP Morgan Chase; among its 35,000 acquisitions it boasts works by Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder, Picasso, Jasper Johns and Sol LeWitt and stages exhibitions which are “a source of inspiration to its employees and the public as well as indicating an alternative investment.”
On the company’s private banking site they explain how they can advise clients to finance their art collections because “Art transcends economic environments, providing cultural enrichment and a broadening of your asset classes.”
Investors with Deutsche Bank must be reassured that its London HQ at 21, Moorfields is embellished with works by Damien Hurst, Tony Cragg and Anish Kapoor and perhaps impressed that the bank has embraced fashionable themes of diversity with works by 100 artists from over 27 different nationalities of which 49 per cent are women, transgender or non-binary and 48per cent are people of colour.
(It is perhaps worth mentioning that in figures produced by the Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting wealthy collectors, of any gender, spent 32 per cent less on art and antiques in 2023 compared to 2016).
No one at Intesa Sao Paolo would argue about the value of art to a canny investor but where the difference lies is in that sense of heritage the bank nurtures. To call their collection parochial is not to belittle it but to emphasise how far the art is removed from the flash and cash of the global institutions.
The core of the works on show in all four galleries is drawn from local inspiration. In Milan, its fascinating collection ranges from tender plaster works by Canova to paintings celebrating the Risorgimento, Italy’s long struggle for national unity.
Genre representations of the working class and landscapes of Lombardy region emphasise Milan’s significant role in Italian culture in the 1800s with works by artists little known outside the region such as Francesco Hayez, Gerolamo Induno and Sebastiano De Albertis who lack the reputation — or the commercial dazzle of Hirst and Co — but have a charm of authenticity which speaks to the culture of the region.
More recent art from the 50s and 60s is not neglected with a selection — again from the region — including Umberto Boccioni, Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri.
The gallery in Vicenza has display, Ceramics and Clouds. What Ancient Greek Ceramics Tell Us About Ourselves while in Naples, the permanent collection includes sculptures and paintings from southern Italy between the 17th and 20th centuries and also finds space for contemporary art such as the recently finished exhibition, Andy Warhol: Triple Elvis.
“We are Italian, of course, but we are European,” insists Coppola. “It’s because we are Italian that we are looking at international relationships, being a cultural player.”
Much of the bank’s strategy, however, is based below the line and over the long term. Schoolchildren are encouraged to come, to look and learn, students enjoy free entry up to the age of 18 and courses are available for graduates to learn how to curate an exhibition or manage a gallery.
Perhaps the most enduring project is the restoration of neglected masterpieces. Launched in Vicenza in 1989 La Restituzioni is a programme which has now restored 2,000 paintings and sculptures from the region which had lain discarded in churches, council chambers and cultural institutions.
Coppola: “Restituzione is part of roots, of our history, of our DNA. It shows how we have a responsibility to our heritage and prove we are on the side of public culture by investing in the community we are a part of.
“I strongly believe that private companies must have a role in promoting art and culture because we are Italian. It’s a must.”
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