Just one Canaletto: a Venetian scene, of the type admired by Berlusconi.
We know about his politics (conservative), his business dealings (opaque) and even his marital situation (tense). But what of Silvio Berlusconi's taste in art? This is a question of some importance because the former Italian prime minister's supporters like to promote their leader as a man of taste and refinement.
Well, last month Italy's richest citizen took time off from leading the Italian right to pop up to Maastricht for the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF). Flanked by his chosen adviser, a gallery owner and Old Masters expert, Cesare Lampronti, he is reckoned to have blued between a million and 1.5m euros.
It is certainly all of a piece with Mr Berlusconi's conservatism that he should be a great fan of Canaletto and, indeed, of Venetian waterscapes in general. On this occasion, he managed to pocket a couple more, both by a less well-known 18th century painter, Apollonio Domenichini. In similar vein, he scooped up two landscapes of the countryside around Rome by the Flemish artist Jan Frans Van Bloemen whose career spanned the 17th and 18th centuries. Mr Berlusconi also decided to invest in a work of the same period by an Italian master, Giovanni Odazzi.
More debatably, he was much taken with a canvas painted in 1913 by the Belgian post-Impressionist Franz van Holder. Far be it from me to say that it is sentimental. I merely note that it is entitled Fragrant Evening or Parfum du Soir.
Contemporary art? Not much to Mr Berlusconi's taste, it would seem. However, he did pick up a bronze, of an African warrior, by a Dutch artist Willem Lenssinck. To judge by his website, Lenssinck's works are strong on cheeky humour. The one bought by Mr Berlusconi is called Guardian X. Could he be trying to tell us something?
• This article was amended on 21 April 2014 to correct the spelling of Willem Lenssinck's name.
