Texan 'princess' loses Rome villa with Caravaggio artwork in inheritance dispute.
Princess Rita Jenrette Boncompagni Ludovisi, a Texas-born princess, was evicted from a historic villa in Rome that contains the only known ceiling painted by Caravaggio, following a bitter inheritance dispute. The villa has been in the Ludovisi family since the early 1600s and was put on the court-ordered auction block last year as part of the inheritance dispute and assigned a court-appraised value of 471 million euros ($533 million), in large part due to the Caravaggio. The princess has insisted that she had cared for the villa during her two decades living there and digitized the family’s archive, with the help of Rutgers University.
