Inside the royal art scandal that scammed Prince Charles and left the Queen 'highly upset'
By CHRISTINE CLARK/COURTESY OF TONY TETRO.
Besides, Stunt continues, even if a few of the paintings were fakes—which they absolutely, most definitely were not—where’s the crime? “I loaned these because I believe in the Prince’s Foundation,” he says. “I love the Prince of Wales.” His voice rises to a shout. “I benevolentlyokay? So there was no financial crime because I am, for free, loaning art for them to put on display.”Stunt grows emotional as he speaks of the prince.
One evening, at a Jay-Z and Beyoncé party in London, he saw her: Petra Ecclestone, then 17, the youngest daughter of Formula 1 king Bernie Ecclestone. Petra lived in a world even more rarefied than Stunt’s: flying around the world on her father’s private jet, being driven to school in a Ferrari, waiting to receive her share of a trust fund worth 4.5 billion pounds. A mutual friend set them up on a blind date, and Stunt came roaring up to the Ecclestone home in his Lamborghini.
Petra’s father, Stunt says, was “a pushover.” The problem was her mother, Slavica Ecclestone, a former Armani model from Croatia who stood a foot taller than her husband. “I call her Lady Macbeth,” Stunt says. “She obviously wasn’t happy about it. But she doesn’t like anyone. Prince William wouldn’t be good enough for her. Someone like me?The couple were married at the turreted Odescalchi Castle, outside Rome. “A Fairytale Wedding Fit for a Formula One Princess,”magazine proclaimed.
Once he was released, Tetro came up with a new way to employ his skill as an artistic copycat. For around $20,000, he would bang out a replica painting—done “in the style of” a famous artist—for wealthy clients seeking to impress their friends on the cheap. Stunt insists he never tried to conceal the provenance of his Tetro knockoffs. “I know Tony Tetro,” he tells me. “I’ve openly admitted that. I used to say, ‘Everyone, look at this painting. It’s a Rembrandt, but it’s not. It’s by Tony Tetro.’ I do have art from him, because he was my friend.”Working for Stunt wasn’t always pleasant. “He’s volatile—he goes up and down like an escalator,” Tetro says. “On the phone sometimes, he would yell at me because I was taking too much time.
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