Peter Glidewell: the shadow man of Almagia's antiquities dealings in New York
From Sotheby's London to consultant to the Ministry of Culture on museum policy. For investigators he is part of his cousin's international criminal network
5' min read
5' min read
Peter Cesare Glidewell, to many this name will mean little or nothing, but to insiders and in the rooms of the Ministry of Culture the name circulates, and how. It appears several times in the arrest warrant against the Italian-American antiquities dealer, Edoardo Almagià, issued on Thursday 31 October by Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Rachel Pauley at the request of Matthew Bogdanos, head of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (Atu) at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
Described in the arrest warant as the 'business partner' of Almagià, his cousin, Glidewell is a man close to the former undersecretary Vittorio Sgarbi, current president of the Mart in Rovereto, now under investigation for money laundering and counterfeiting cultural goods (for the Rutilio Manetti painting). According to the arrest warrant, Glidewell brokered the sale of two pieces - a Rhyton and a Dinos (pictured on display in the Museo dell'arte Salvata), sold for $50,000 to the collectorShelby White seized in 2021 and returned to Italy - and donated a piece trafficked by Almagia to the Princeton Museum that was also stolen from Italy. Glidewell also shared with Almagià, according to the 80-page arrest warrant, the profits from the sale of the illicitly sourced goods, listed in the so-called Yellow Book, one of the two notebooks that make up the Almagià Archive with the list of all the ancient works of art, there must be more than a hundred, sold in partnership by 'AE' (Almagià Edoardo) and 'PG' (Peter Glidewell).
Glidewell, born in 1957, was born in Rome and after studying at Sotheby's Institute of Art he consulted for Sotheby's London. Between 2001 and 2002, he worked as an advisor to the Italian Minister of Culture on museum policy, having been appointed by the former Deputy Secretary of the Minister of Culture, Vittorio Sgarbi. Described as one of Vittorio Sgarbi's most trusted advisors, Glidewell moves poised, like his mentor, in grey territory.
The archives where everything is documented
.In April 2006, special agents of the US Department of Homeland Security, with the intelligence assistance of officers of the Italian Carabinieri, obtained legal authorisation to enter and photograph the contents of Almagià's New York flat on East 78th Street, as well as his rented storage space at the Manhattan mini-storage facility on 62nd Street in New York. There, officers documented dozens of antiquities and stacks of records detailing the trafficking operations of the clandestinely excavated works. In the operation, law enforcement officers found the sales transactions noted by Almagià in the 'Green Book' and 'Yellow Book' from 1986 to 2001.
In the 'Green Book', Almagià listed in detail a total of almost 2000 archaeological artefacts of Italian provenance that he had sold from his New York flat. In doing so, he often grouped the artefacts according to the tombmaster from whom he had purchased the material (identifying the supplier tombmaster by his nickname or initials). Some entries listed in these registers indicated both the price Almagià had paid to his source (often Mauro Morani) and the price at which he had subsequently sold the archaeological artefact. Sometimes, some entries even listed to whom the stolen artefact had been sold.
