The 1950s and 1960s were two decades of remarkable economic expansion, not only in the United States, but also, and particularly, in continental Europe, where the incredibly robust post-war reconstruction bore even more bountiful rewards. Nowhere was this rebirth more explosive than in Italy, and no sector of that nation’s economy was more exuberant than the art market during those years. Although the priority luxury item for a successful Italian entrepreneur might have been a red Ferrari, and then, second in line, perhaps a fancy mistress, there is little doubt that immediately thereafter on the shopping list would have been all manner of antique art. The year 1959 saw the birth in Florence of the world’s first international art and antiques fair, the Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato. It was mounted in the monumental Palazzo Strozzi and lasted for a full month, with firms coming to exhibit from as far afield as New York, Paris, and beyond. Legend has it that the Milan dealer Tullio Silva, whose specialty was eighteenth-century Venetian lacquered furniture, sold out and replenished his stand three times over the course of the fair.

Considered an eminence among Italian dealers was an elderly, rotund, and very pompous Genoese called Ildebrando Bossi. He operated privately and discreetly in a city that, more than any other in Italy, had successfully maintained its wealth born of an ancient mercantile tradition and the notoriously tight-fisted parsimony of its citizens. Bossi may not have had reason to be pompous, but