Among the countless ways to collect art, Paolo Zani’s approach is rooted in two fundamental principles. The first is always viewing home as the ultimate destination for any acquisition. The second, to be honed through hands-on experience, is constantly enhancing the quality of the art collection. The art collector may sell, but only to buy something better as soon as it appears on the market. Zani has built a remarkably consistent, coherent, and ambitious collection based on these two principles. Indeed, beyond the opportunities offered by the time he lived in – in this sense, Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli and the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers were undoubtedly luckier than all those born in Europe after World War II – for Zani art collecting was not a mere personal pleasure of unifying what once was separated. It was also and foremost the pursuit of the apex, at any cost. And that’s why also in this case it’s not the financial resources themselves that make the difference: the other fundamental resource is time.
Initially, Paolo Zani’s time for collecting art is primarily spent with Gerardo Duse, a charismatic merchant from Brescia, renowned for his intuition, business acumen, boldness, and, above all, discretion. Like a skilled mushroom hunter, Zani learns to buy not just what appealed to his eye, which would be detrimental, but what is truly ‘edible’ and therefore beautiful in its own right. In this sense, the phrase that welcomes visitors to the Cellatica villa (Brescia), which in February 2020 becomes the Paolo and Carolina Zani home museum Fondazione Paolo e Carolina Zani is emblematic: ‘Beauty is truth, truth is beauty – this is all you know on earth, and all you need to know,’ from the Ode on a Greek Urn by John Keats. Moreover, from a collector’s perspective, the poem from which the quote is taken can be interpreted as a celebration of the ability of certain objects of beauty to transcend the people and events they directly or indirectly represent. As for many before him, Zani likely finds solace in collecting as a means of overcoming the fear of death.
At the dawn of the new century, the brothers Augusto and Marco Brun (Brun Fine Art) joins Duse on the scene, quickly becoming Paolo Zani’s primary advisors. “We often kept in touch – recalls Marco Brun -, and there was a mutual trust and respect between us. Zani not only turned to us for most of his acquisitions, but also to verify the authenticity of the pieces he spotted on the market, or to handle transactions.” The Brun brothers were with the collector in London on June 9th 2005 when Christie’s auctioned what would become the most significant piece of the Zani collection. This was the octagonal tabletop with garlands of flowers, fruit, and birds, crafted by the Galleria dei Lavori in Florence between the late 17th and early 18th century, resting on a 19th-century base by George Bullock.
As Paolo Zani would later explain, ‘grasping its uniqueness was easy during the auction, but owning it required more than just the courage to bid higher.’ (the quote is found on page 93 of the detailed ‘Collection Guide’ published by the Paolo and Carolina Zani Foundation in 2021). In fact, due to the economic resources required by the anti-terrorism plan launched by the British government following the subway attacks perpetrated the month after the auction (July 7th, 2005), England waived its right of first refusal on the work, allowing it to freely leave the Kingdom and return to Italy. The Brun brothers’ intercession also led to the acquisition of the late 16th-century Roman marble and lapis lazuli inlay (Christie’s, London, July 4, 2013), the Venus in the Forge of Vulcan, painted by Francois Boucher in 1747 (2013), the study of the Vatican Mosaic from the third quarter of the 18th century (2018), and the last canvas to join the collection, the extraordinary View of Villa Loredan in Paese, painted by Francesco Guardi in 1780 and acquired by Zani in 2018.
The relationship with the Bruns is a privileged one, yet not exclusive. Marco Brun recalls, “Paolo Zani was a very private individual. He was only occasionally spotted at fairs. However, he was familiar with the antique galleries that dealt with his interests.” These include Tomasso, Walter Padovani, Steinitz, Marco Datrino, and Tullio Silva, with whom Zani also consults when it comes to buy Venetian lacquers. From Silva he acquires the so-called pink dresser of Queen Victoria, an eighteenth-century chest of drawers of Venetian manufacture, previously part of the collection of Count Franco Cella di Rivara (Inv. 278). “Zani has refined himself over time – says Silva – and always sought to improve. And during an auction, if he really wanted something he would never stop bidding higher. Sky was the limit. ” At Silva he buys the pair of Gueridon tripods with snakes and goat legs (late 18th century), the Venetian mirror now in Villa Zani’s octagon hall among the views of Guardi and Bellotto, as well as the frame of Bacchus and Ariadne by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, which Zani finds at Silva, perfectly sized for the canvas (2003).
Paolo Zani puts together roughly 800 works of art, with proveniences spanning from the collection of the last Shah of Persia, Reza Pahlavi, to that of Sofia Loren and Carlo Ponti, passing through the de Rothschilds, the Duke of Westminster, Louis XV of France and Yves Saint Laurent. For instance, the suite of Genoese Baroque chairs, previously part of the furnishings of Palazzo Carrega Cataldi (Christie’s, 2009), were part of the latter’s collection (Christie’s, 2009). As the current director of the Paolo and Carolina Zani Foundation, Massimiliano Capella points out that the house for which he collected was also the only one Zani lived in, along with his daughter Carolina and his wife Patrizia Ondelli. It is, therefore, a faithful representation of his inner world, ambition, pragmatism, and discipline as a man, as well as an art collector. As Alvar González Palacios recalls in his essay on the Zani collection, published in the book that currently provides the most comprehensive account (Abitare l’Arte, 2020, also published by the Foundation), “Collectors and art historians share many commonalities, yet they rarely find themselves in complete agreement. Collectors are often wealthy and can buy whatever they desire; art historians, on the other hand, rarely possess such means, yet they delude themselves into believing they know everything.” Indeed, González Palacios stands out as a rare exception in Zani’s life, one of the few art historians with whom he forges a “friendly relationship” as Palacios puts it. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that Zani has a sort of crypto-intellectual personality himself, hence puts his talent and entrepreneurial fortune at the service of a precise idea of beauty – ‘the beauty that can educate, the beauty that can replace the experience of the absolute’ (Zani). That is the real heritage he is able to get from his talent and fortune. And it comes with no surprise that at some point Zani feels the urge to share it, as an intellectual is always keen to share his knowledge, with those who ask for it at least.
31 March 2025
