Unpaid at Christie’s, Chardin’s Melon enters Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum
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Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum has finally landed the Chardin still life it's been missing. On May 22, the Texas museum announced that it was able to exhibit Le Melon entamé (dated 1760), after reaching an agreement with the de Rothschild family, who had held it for a century and a half. Christie's had put this painting up for sale in Paris in June 2024, achieving a world record for an 18th-century work at €26 .7m . Unfortunately, the buyer, a St. Moritz promoter by the name of Nanni Bassani Antivari, heir to an Italian-Monegasque family, was already deeply in debt and unable to deliver any payment (see Gazette 2024 no. 46). After several
