Boston Raphael: Legal Art History

By Belinda Rathbone

In 1969, my father, Perry T. Rathbone, then Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (the “MFA” or the “Museum”), bought a previously unknown painting by Raphael from an elderly art dealer in Genoa. Attributed to one of the great artists of the Italian Renaissance, this portrait of a young girl was to be the crown jewel of the MFA’s centennial year: 1970. But questions about the legitimacy of its exportation from Italy, compounded by widespread doubts about its attribution to Raphael, almost immediately turned this celebratory event into a tragic fiasco. For my father, it spelled the unraveling of his distinguished thirty-two year career as a museum director. In the then emerging field of art law, the Boston Raphael became a landmark case.

At the time, Italian export laws established in 1939 stipulated that any work of art considered an important piece of the nation’s cultural heritage could be exported only after the state itself was given a two-month option to acquire it.  Furthermore, if the right was not exercised, a hefty 30% export tax was imposed on any potential buyer from outside of Italy.  This law effectively paralyzed the Italian art trade for important works, and the Art Dealers Association of Italy fought the export tax for years, without success. However, an unknown or unpublished work stood a reasonable chance of legal export. Though technically speaking an important work of art, whether known or not, should have been registered with the Italian government, it was unusual for private owners to volunteer such information. The result was that countless works of art in private hands remained unregistered, including the Boston Raphael. Dealers and foreign collectors alike took advantage of this gray area of the law; while they weighed the odds, the only certainty they could rely on was that once the object was safely outside Italy, Italian law did not apply. As explained by art law specialist John Merryman in Law, Ethics, and the Visual Arts, “although the offended nation could punish the smuggler, if it could catch him, and might have the power to confiscate the illegally exported article if it should be returned to the national territory, it could not expect the foreign nation to punish the smuggler or seize and return the object.” With the Museum Board’s approval, Rathbone agreed to pay art dealer Ildebrando Bossi $600,000 for the painting, drawing on the previously untapped Charles Bayley Fund, which was earmarked for the purchase of an important painting.