By JENNIFER FERMINO
Posted: 3:46 am
July 24, 2008
An Italian author has filed a $32 million lawsuit accusing Sotheby's of losing his 16th-century painting.
Giancorrado Ulrich sent a painting he believed to be "Rest on the Flight into Egypt," by the Renaissance painter Parmigianino, to the New York auction house for appraisal in 2005.
He hasn't seen it since, and officials at Sotheby's claim they already returned it to the SoHo gallery owner who'd been entrusted by Ulrich to care for it, the court papers say.
"The painting is in our system as having been returned," a Sotheby's official wrote to Ulrich.
As proof, the auction house sent Ulrich a release slip that says it delivered the painting to Marco Grassi, the gallery owner, the lawsuit says.
But the slip is for a painting with a different title and was never signed by Grassi, according to the papers.
"I asked Sotheby's, 'Would you deliver a multimillion-dollar painting without a signature?' They said, 'Yes,' " said Ulrich's lawyer, Richard Ortoli.
