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'Crime of the Century'

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'Crime of the Century' HIGH NOON BECKONS IN THE ARTWORLD’S ‘CRIME OF THE CENTURY’ GIULIANO RUFFINI has been in the headlines since 2016, when French authorities began investigating his onetime ownership of works by Cranach, Hals, Parmigianino and Gentileschi, among others. That investigation was prompted by a Poison-Pen Letter accusing Ruffini of selling not bona fide Old Masters, but Fakes... and, almost unbelievably, fakes good enough to fool the world’s top dealers, auctioneers, museum curators and private collectors – and sell for millions. That anonymous missive is here made public for the first time – with Giuliano Ruffini pointing the finger at man he believes wrote it: his ex-associate JEAN-CHARLES METHIAZ. The two former lady-killers, now in their mid-seventies, have spent the coronavirus lockdown in isolation at opposite ends of Italy: Ruffini with his son Mathieu in the rugged Apennine Hills south of Parma; Méthiaz with his dogs Oscar and Gaston amidst the olive groves of Apulia. Ruffini has been passing the time on home restoration, Méthiaz by posting lengthy diatribes on Facebook. His favourite targets: French President Emmanuel Macron (‘a demented manipulator’); his predecessor François Hollande (‘an incapable moron’); and ‘Al Capone’ – which is how Jean-Charles Méthiaz refers to Giuliano Ruffini. ‘The Head of Old Masters at a prestigious auction house told me that, if they know a painting comes from Ruffini, they don’t even want to look at it’ wrote Méthiaz in March 2020. ‘He even added that this man was the devil.’ When Ruffini and Méthiaz finally emerge blinking into the sunlight, it will be at High Noon – for a shoot-out in France’s Civil Court on 20 May 2021 over what, in another post, Méthiaz has dubbed ‘l’escroquerie du siècle.’ The Crime Of The Century. THE PERSUADERS ! GIULIANO RUFFINI & JEAN-CHARLES METHIAZ RUFFINI AND METHIAZ first met in 2000 at a Milan dinner-party hosted by Michelle Vasseur, a French entrepreneuse who owned a beauty clinic in the city. She and Ruffini were introduced to one another by a mutual plastic surgeon friend from Cannes. Ruffini and Méthiaz – born a year apart – hit it off. When, soon afterwards, Méthiaz and Vasseur came to visit him at his home near Parma, Ruffini cooked a huge salmon in the industrial oven he had installed to cater for parties thrown by his teenage son. ‘Méthiaz gutted the fish’ recalls Ruffini grimly. Méthiaz’s artworld knowledge at the time swam around second-hand Art Deco – acquired while working for an earlier girlfriend, who had a stand at the Puces de St-Ouen, the principal Paris flea-market. ‘He was not very well-known’ declares Paris picture dealer Jean-Marie Le Fell, who first met Méthiaz in 1978. ‘He was not a member of any experts’ organization, and he never advertised.’ ‘Méthiaz used to hang out at St-Tropez’ asserts Ruffini (quoting a friend who ran a beach café there). ‘Then he called himself a journalist – maybe he wrote three or four lines in some magazine or other. He found various women to maintain him – he was a good- looking guy. But his life was a failure… until he stumbled across a useful idiot like yours truly.’ THE YOUNG RUFFINI 1945-71 Giuliano Ruffini was born in a 17th century farmhouse (left) near the River Enza in the hamlet of Velago de Ceretolo, 30 miles south of Parma, on 4 April 1945. He spent his early years with his maternal grandparents, whose home had been damaged in the Garfagnana Earthquake of September 1920. ‘I loved waking up with the cock crowing, fresh milk for breakfast and the smell of hay, the cowshed and newly baked bread’ he coos nostalgically. When he was three his father found work as a cobbler in Paris, and the family moved to Rue Letort, a grimy street close to the Puces de St-Ouen. It was a rough neighbourhood. Immigrants were not welcome. There was scant parental affection to compensate. Ruffini was raised a Catholic and, like Méthiaz, took First Communion. He looks back with horror on the roving fingers of boy-loving priests. The only youthful moments Ruffini remembers with fondness was a year spent in Algiers when he was eight. His father had been sent to work for a new shoe-shop on the city’s main shopping street, Rue Michelet [now Rue Didouche-Mourad] , and the family were lodged in a ‘superb apartment on the top floor overlooking the sea.’ Ruffini’s year in North Africa sparked a love of travel that would develop into almost pathological wanderlust. Hardly any twelve-month period of his adult life would be spent in the same place. 2 Ruffini’s passion for art was sparked when his father’s boss gave him a box of paints for Christmas. He began painting in earnest at thirteen, setting up his easel by the River Enza (seen from his grandparents’ home, above right) while on holiday. He never took lessons. In 1959 Ruffini obtained French nationality and scraped his school leaving certificate. ‘I’d like to read and write properly’ he shrugs ‘but I can’t concentrate, and I’m not much cop when it comes to spelling or grammar.’ After a year as an apprentice in Rue Boinod, his father landed him a job on the assembly line at the huge Chauvin Arnoux electronics factory on Rue Championnet. Meanwhile his parents had saved up enough to buy a tiny two-room flat on Boulevard Ornano, close to Porte de Clignancourt, where Ruffini and his brother slept in a fold-up bed in the dining-room. Eighteen months later, aged 16, he fled to Cannes with his 19 year-old girlfriend Françoise Greffe (above). They stayed in a maid’s attic that her parents rented above the Hôtel Miramar. Françoise ‘played the flirt with guys who were loaded, saying I was her cousin’ recalls Ruffini. In 1965 she would star as as Virginia de Solen in the erotic movie Sexus. Ruffini, meanwhile, began to paint full-time – using a palette-knife in a vigorous Figurative style he would ambitiously claim indebted to Vlaminck. His works were hung by Greffe’s parents in their restaurant on Rue Pasteur, next to the Miramar, where they caught the eye of lesbian singing legend Damia (left, 1889-1978), a sort of inter-war Edith Piaf, who arranged for them to be exhibited in Paris – tasking her impresario Georges Rovère (who worked for the Philips record label) with presenting Ruffini to the capital’s glitterati. Ruffini was lodged in a flat near Place de Clichy formerly occupied by Jacques Brel – whom he met, being struck by his catch-phrase ‘mon cul sur la commode’ (later immortalized by Charles Aznavour in the song J’ai Vu Paris). Jean Cocteau was lined up as Ruffini’s artistic advisor, but died from a heart attack on 11 October 1963 two days before the pair were due to meet (‘I knew Cocteau was gay’ says Ruffini ‘but that didn’t bother me’). Ruffini appeared on the daily TV culture show Paris-Club alongside Maurice Escande, head of the Comédie-Française, and spent a fortnight preparing for his exhibition as the guest of Lido director Pierre Guérin and his Dutch boyfriend at Le Moulin de Mistou – their country-house in Mauperthuis, 30 miles east of Paris. On 27 February 1964 Ruffini was invited to Studio Harcourt to sit for a celebrity black-and-white photographic portrait. His show opened a few days later, hosted by the Galerie du Colisée at 40 rue du Colisée (500 yards from the Champs-Elysées). The all-star vernissage was filmed by British Pathé as Young French Artist Ruffini On Show. 3 The young artist appeared arm-in-arm with teenage singing star Michelle Torr (bottom left) who, sniffs Ruffini, ‘was cute but never washed – you could smell her coming a mile off.’ Torr (as a blonde) would represent Luxembourg at the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest (bottom right) – coming 10th with Ce soir, je t’attendais (released in the U.K. as ‘Only Tears Are Left For Me’). The Paris exhibition virtually sold out, but Ruffini blew his new-found riches on a sports car and the Riviera high life. ‘I was a young fool!’ he admits. ‘Ended up without a kopeck!’ So he accepted an invitation to go and work for a dealer in Rome, decorating furniture with painted figures. Ruffini didn’t stay long. ‘It turned out he was queer and wanted to get his way with me. I nearly knocked his block off.’ He returned to Paris, where he was briefly involved in an unsuccessful attempt to launch an advertisement lay-out agency in Rue Bergère, then returned to Italy – renting a small house in Vetto, three miles south of his birthplace, where he earned a living by selling his paintings. In 1967 he applied to emigrate to Australia, landing in Brisbane and spending the first two weeks in hospital being treated for syphilis. Then he was assigned to a state hostel in Torwood, just outside Brisbane – landing a job in a bar-restaurant run by a Swiss immigrant and his Australian wife, and learning to cook. A year later he moved to Sydney, running errands for a modern art gallery. Three months afterwards he headed to New Caledonia, living in ‘stunningly beautiful’ Nouméa in a small hotel run by an aged couple who, when his funds ran out, let him stay on for free. In return he painted them a large view of Notre-Dame in Paris. He found work as a cartoonist for a local newspaper.
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