Kent dealer wins Leonardo Prize

The Crowley Colosso Leonardo Prize is awarded annually at the Orangerie Italiana fine art fair to the dealer who has made the most important new find, discovery, or reattribution of an Italian work of art. This year’s prize was awarded to Clive Gill of Sarice Antiques, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Mr Gill’s wife nominated him for the prize for his purchase of the “Astronomicon”, a poem in Latin verse on astronomy and astrology of around 1455-60 by Basinio da Parma, dedicated to Malatesta Novello, lord of Cesena, and probably made in Rimini. Mr Gill spotted the manuscript at a local auction and purchased it for £1,500, realising its quality but not its rarity or importance; Sotheby’s Christopher de Hamel found it “extraordinarily interesting”. The “Astronomicon” sold to the Cassa di Risparmio in Rimini for the Rimini Museum at Sotheby’s on 23 July 1992 for £105,000 against an estimate of £60,000-80,000.