Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial and outspoken media mogul and populist politician, who led three Italian governments between 1994 and 2011, has died aged 86.
Berlusconi, who had been known for more than 30 years in and out of the political arena for his obscene and often xenophobic comments on aesthetic and cultural issues, was an early champion of the “culture wars” rhetoric. on national heritage, contemporary art and architecture. which has since taken off internationally in the age of social media.
The “Berlusconification” of Italian politics, where Berlusconi openly maintained control of Italy’s largest commercial television company while serving as prime minister, has in some way prefigured and shaped the Trumpification of American politics since 2016.
Berlusconi, with his ties to notorious “Bunga Bunga” sex parties, gave media companies, including his own, content that “amused” and grabbed public attention while diverting attention from political disputes and personal to have a quasi-monopoly media baron at the head of a Western democracy. Like Donald Trump in 2016, Berlusconi came to power in 1994 with no prior political experience.
A typical Berlusconi cultural ‘fury’ revolved around his comments in 2008 on the design of a new office building, by the famous American architect Daniel Liebeskind, for the Fiera Milano development, headquarters of Milan’s trade fairs. Berlusconi, near the start of his third term as prime minister, threatened to withdraw planning permission for a project by Libeskind after the architect called him “xenophobic” and called his policies “repugnant”.
In the run-up to the April 2008 general election, which returned Berlusconi to power, he had made an off-the-cuff remark about Libeskind’s dramatically curvaceous design. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Berlusconi objected to Libeskind’s design because it was not manly enough and communicated “a sense of helplessness”. In the row that followed, philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco was asked to comment on the tower, he said: “Milan is full of people with twisted limbs,” Eco said, “there will just be one more who will need Viagra.”
Interviewed by CorriereLibeskind replied, “In Fascist Italy, anything that wasn’t ‘straight’ was considered ‘perverse art’…my tower is inspired by the work of Leonardo da Vinci and the great Italian culture. [Berlusconi] has neither the time nor the intellect to study them. As an American and a Jew raised in Poland, I find Berlusconi abominable. His conception of nationalism, of closing borders and of denying what is different, is repugnant. He hates strangers.
Berlusconi was apparently so offended by these remarks that he made it known he would block development unless Libeskind apologized. A spokeswoman for Fiera Milano developers said at the time that the project was still “on track”. It was duly completed in 2017 as the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Tower.
A child of Milan
Berlusconi was born in Milan in 1936, grew up in a middle-class family, attending Sant’Ambrogio, one of its main schools. He studied law at university before embarking on lucrative property ventures in suburban Milan and founding Mediaset, Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster. The breakthrough in Berlusconi’s fortunes as a media mogul was a 1984 change to the law that removed the state broadcaster RAI’s monopoly on national broadcasting. This opened the door for Berlusconi to create the first and only national commercial television network in Italy. He remained closely linked to his hometown and for years was the owner of one of its great football teams, AC Milan.
In 1993, after his political boss Bettino Craxi went into voluntary exile in Tunisia after being found guilty of corruption and illicit financing of the Italian Socialist Party, Berlusconi founded the center-right party Forza Italia. He used his television channels to promote his candidacy and was elected Prime Minister in 1994.
Berlusconi, who was known as the “knight” or kingmaker of Italian politics, was convicted of tax evasion in 2012 and consequently lost his seat in the Italian Senate the following year. A four-year prison sentence was reduced to almost a year of community service in a Milan retirement home. He made a comeback after his ban on holding public office was lifted in 2018, becoming an MEP in 2019; his Forza Italia party is a junior partner in the right-wing government formed by Giorgia Meloni last year.
Berlusconi’s long-standing friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin was seen as the source of closer cultural ties – based on the historically good relations between the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union –between Russia and Italy in the early 2020s, with a growing program of historic artwork loans between the Hermitage Museum and Italian institutions.
The figure who best represented the mixed approach to the arts and Italian heritage, in the Berlusconi years, was its undersecretary for culture, the art historian Vittorio Sgarbi. Sgarbi once said The world that he was not politically correct enough for Berlusconi to hold the post of culture minister himself, but Sgarbi nevertheless appeared on Berlusconi’s network giving his opinion on current affairs in Sgarbi Dai.
However, as Undersecretary Sgarbi was a champion of national heritage who led a 2001 attempt to acquire the legendary Torlonia Marbles – the largest collection of classical art in private hands, housed in Palazzo Torlonia, Rome – for the Italian State during Berlusconi’s second term. (The marbles have since been exhibited in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, and 20 years after the 2001 initiative, are again at the heart of the national heritage debate..) During Berlusconi’s third term, Sgarbi organized an Italian pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, featuring 200 artists, a council of advisers from across the arts, and seen as a deliberate jab in the eyes of purists in the world of art.
Villa San Martino, Arcore, north of Milan, where Berlusconi housed his collection of old masters and built a mausoleum designed by Pietro Cascella Dino Fracchia / Alamy Stock Photo
The taste of botany and the old masters
At Villa Certosa, Sardinia – the villa where he hosted Putin, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as “Bunga Bunga” parties – Berlusconi transformed the gardens into a botanical marvel. He was not known for his taste in interior decoration but built up a collection of old masters at Villa San Martino, his favorite home, in Arcore, north of Milan, the most recent acquisition being a portrait of Titian from 1533 by Ippolito dei Medici which joined a collection including a copy of Parmigianino’s 1525 Anteaand a 1969 portrait, by Pietro Annigoni, of Marchioness Anna Casati Stampa.
Writing in our sister journal The Giornale Dell’Arte, Franco Fanelli pointed to Berlusconi’s lack of personal cultural patronage, despite his immense wealth, with the exception of the family mausoleum commissioned from the sculptor Pietro Cascella. “On the other hand,” Fanelli commented, “he inspired street artists, the neo-pop painter Domenico Veneziano [born 1970] and to the most brilliant Italian designer, Altan, keen to emphasize his large ears (Berlusconi did not like being filmed in profile) and the heels intended to remedy his small size.
The Cascella-designed mausoleum at Villa San Martino was erected in the 1990s, shortly after Berlusconi’s father died. It is built in white marble from the Apuan Alps, with an abstract sculpture on the outside and a staircase leading to a white marble sarcophagus. When Berlusconi’s mother died, she was nevertheless buried with her late husband, rather than in the mausoleum, and a change in Italian law on burial on private property near a residence may prevent Berlusconi from be buried there himself.
Slivio Berlusconi; born in Milan on September 29, 1936; Chairman, Forza Italia 1994-2023; Italian prime minister 1994-95, 2001-06, 2008-11; married 1965 Carla Dall’Oglio (one daughter, one son; marriage dissolved 1985), 1990 Veronica Lario (two daughters, one son; marriage dissolved 2010); died in Milan on June 12, 2023.
