DNA Twist in Battle for £285m Art Estate

A transatlantic legal battle over the £285m estate of one of the 20th century's most distinguished art connoisseurs, Sir Harold Acton, took a new turn yesterday when it was reported that DNA tests had authenticated claims by an Italian family that he had an unacknowledged and illegitimate half-sister.

The woman's children are claiming a half-share in one of the world's greatest art collections from the US university to which it had been bequeathed.

The protagonists in the wrangle include a Honolulu-based Italian princess and a man thought to have inspired a character in Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited.

Sir Harold Acton, a renowned collector and reputedly the model for Waugh's undergraduate aesthete, Anthony Blanche, died in 1994, willing his estate to New York University. At the time it was the biggest bequest ever made to a US seat of learning.

Sir Harold left 40,000 rare books, 5,000 art works, including one attributed to Donatello, and a 57-acre estate with four villas. The biggest is Villa La Pietra, a 60-room Medici family palace, whose former guests include Prince Charles, Winston Churchill, DH Lawrence and Picasso.

A year after Sir Harold's death the owner of a Florentine guest house came forward to contest his will. Liana Beacci claimed she was Sir Harold's half-sister, the product of a secret liaison between his father, Arthur Acton, and her mother, Exilia, who was Arthur Acton's secretary.

Beacci's claim was thrown out by Italy's highest appeals court in 1997. But her children succeeded in getting the case reheard after her death three years later.

Last year a Florentine judge granted permission for the bodies of Beacci and her alleged father and half-brother to be dug up for DNA tests.

According to a report in yesterday's Corriere della Sera newspaper a genetics expert and a court-appointed forensic scientist had reported a match between samples from the remains of Arthur Acton and Beacci.

The action is due to resume on June 3 when lawyers for NYU are expected to challenge the reliability of the findings, based on samples taken from a corpse that has been decomposing since 1953.

Last November Beacci's daughter, Princess Dialta Alliata di Montereale, was quoted as saying that she, her two brothers and two sisters would insist on half the inheritance and the ownership of the British Institute in Florence. The institute is housed in a palace on the banks of the river Arno that also belonged to Sir Harold.

From her home in Honolulu the princess told Vanity Fair magazine she would use all legal means to prevent NYU from taking the estate.

Before her death Beacci accused the university of wanting "to tear me to pieces and discredit my person".

Lawyers for the university have meanwhile mocked her children's insistence that their main aim is to establish the truth concerning their family. One said: "When someone says, 'It's not about the money, it's about the honour', then you can be sure it's about the money."

Several issues are likely to ensure the case is long and complicated. Lawyers for the university say one of these is that the villa, acquired by the Actons in 1902, was not bought with Arthur's money but with that of his American wife, Hortense.