Rodolfo Siviero (24 December 1911 - 1983) was an Italian secret agent, art historian and intellectual, most notable for his important work in recovering artworks stolen from Italy during the Second World War as part of the 'Nazi plunder'.
He was born at Guardistallo, the son of Giovanni Siviero, a Venetian non commissioned officer in the Carabinieri and commander of its local station, and his Sienese wife Caterina Bulgarini. [1] He moved from the province of Pisa to Florence in 1924 and continued his studies in arts and letters at the University of Florence, with the aim of becoming an art critic. In the 1930s he joined the Servizio Informazioni Militare, Italy's secret service, and became a Fascist in the conviction that only a totalitarian regime could revolutionise and improve the country. In 1937, under the guise of a scholarship in art history, he set out for Berlin to collect information on the Nazi regime there.
After the Badoglio Proclamation on 8 September 1943 announcing the Allied-Italian armistice, Siviero sided with the anti-fascist front. His main work from then on would be monitoring the Nazi military body known as the Kunstschutz which had originally been set up to protect cultural heritage during the war years but had under Nazi directives shifted to shipping a large number of artworks from Italy to Germany. From the Jewish art historian Giorgio Castelfranco's house on the Lungarno Serristori in Florence (now the Casa Siviero museum), Siviero also coordinated the Italian partisans' intelligence activities. In April to June 1944 he was imprisoned and tortured in Villa Triste on Florence's via Bolognese by the Fascist militias led by Mario Carità and known as the Banda Carità. Having resisted their interrogation, he was released thanks to the efforts of some Republican officials who were working undercover for the Allies.
Thanks to his reputation for resistance work, in 1946 Siviero was made 'minister plenipotentiary' by Alcide De Gasperi, President of the Council of Ministers. Siviero was appointed to that role to direct a diplomatic mission to the Allied military government of Germany to establish the principle of returning Italian artworks looted by the Germans. Siviero managed to get most of those looted works back to Italy and from the 1950s onwards worked for the Italian government systematically researching all artworks stolen and exported from Italy. This intensive activity gained him the nickname of "the 007 of art" and lasted until his death in 1983. During that period Siviero often denounced the lack of attention given by government institutions to recovering artworks. In the 1970s he also became president of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno.
Rodolfo Siviero died in Florence. In his will, he left his house and all its contents to the Regione Toscana, which turned it into a museum dedicated to him eight years after his death. Since 1998, that museum has been managed by the Regione Toscana in collaboration with the "Amici dei Musei e dei Monumenti Fiorentini". Its first floor is open to the public, though the second floor (given in usufruct by Siviero to his sister) is not yet ready.
Mentioned as a significant player in "Double Dealer" by Peter Watson, a factual exposé of art fraud.
"Double Dealer' Peter Watson, Hutchinson & Co., London, 1983
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