Last year, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence made a handsome sum of €70,000 upon auctioning a Michelangelo NFT for €240,000. The NFT was based on Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo artwork and bought by a collector in Rome.
The revelation of the amount made by Uffizi is an important development in the ongoing debate in Italy about ownership and copyright issues linked to major masterpieces housed in national collections.
The famous painting was minted as an NFT by a Milan-based company called Cinello, which has a five year agreement to make DAWs (encrypted digital art works) with Uffizi since 2016.
According to the agreement, the deal should have resulted in the production of 40 digital works, however an Uffizi spokesperson said, “The partnership with Cinello lasted five years and expired in December 2021. During this time Cinello had the right to make NFTs of the works that were part of the agreement; only the Tondo, however, was made.”
The spokesperson went on to explain the distribution model of the sum acquired stating that the “income due to the reproduction of the image is split in half between the company and the museum; the Cinello copy [made] about €140,000 [on the €240,000 sale], so the Uffizi received €70,000 [along with Cinello].”
The remaining €100,000 are production costs.
The sale has resulted in a nationwide debate regarding the ownership of these antique artworks. An article in an Italian newspaper states, “Who owns Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo?…. who has the legal rights linked to the work? If the buyer ever decides to exhibit it, can he do it without the permission of the Uffizi? Basically: do we not risk losing control of our heritage in a time when we are increasingly moving towards the metaverse?”
To these questions raised, Uffizi released a lengthy statement answering, “In reality, [existing laws] give punctual and precise answers to those questions long before the invention of the technology in question, i.e., the Ronchey law of 1994, and again the Urbani code of 2004…. the rights [linked to the works] are in no way alienated, the contractor has no right to use the images granted for exhibitions or other unauthorised uses, and the assets remain firmly in the hands of the Italian Republic.”
The Uffizi spokesperson mentioned above also clarified that “the museum didn’t sell anything but the use of the image—the DAW, the selling of the relative piece, is all [down to] Cinello. It Is false to say that the museum sold the Tondo copy.”
Museums and artists all across the globe are tapping into the NFT and metaverse trend to make money.
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