A publishing firm that specializes in high-dollar glossy coffee table books featuring the Vatican’s Renaissance art has been accused of brokering deals without permission from the Holy See.
The Daily Beast confirmed the allegation with Sarah Rose Speno, an attorney in New York who says she tried to license images of the Sistine Chapel and other Vatican masterpieces for a client who saw them in a book published by Scripta Maneant.
The news outlet then reached out to Monsignor Paolo Nicolini, the vice president of the Vatican Museums, who said he had sold Scripta Maneant rights to the images in the coffee table book—which sells for a whopping $22,000 a copy—back in 2015 for one-time non-world use. Scripta Maneant, however, claimed that they have every right to license images from the book, and, in fact, that they work directly with Nicolini on a case-by-case basis for future rights, which the prelate denied.
When reached for comment, Scripta Maneant issued a statement signed by the CEO Giorgio Armaroli denying that his company has the ability to grant rights for any of the Vatican art, despite having tried to charge Speno more than $80,000 for such rights. “Scripta Maneant has never declared and will never declare that it can transfer any image or any image license to anyone, neither for this type of activity nor for purely editorial activities,” Armaroli says in the statement.
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