UNITED STATES. With more than 7,000 square meters spread across his various residences, one could assume that Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire who died in prison in 2019, financial advisor to the greatest in the art world, would have constituted a collection worthy of interest. But the documents, from the 3 million elements published since December 2025 by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ), showed the emptiness of this collection, even its frightening tone.
The addresses are exceptional. The buildings assert themselves at the height of luxury, like that of New York – reputed to have the largest surface area on the Upper East Side – which, a detail of splendor very popular these days, is equipped with a heated sidewalk for snowy winters. For the interior, Epstein called on renowned decorators, such as Frenchman Alberto Pinto. Some reception rooms have a rich decor that could be described as “exotic boudoir”, red or gold leaf walls, armchairs covered in leopard print or tiger skin… And a few disturbing details. In an entrance, artificial eyeballs or framed brain sections welcome the visitor. Here and there we encounter different stuffed animals: tiger, poodle, elephant, vulture. The rest of the apartments are surprisingly sober.
Cheap copies of works
In many rooms, we discover, in addition to the megalomaniac collection of photos of the child molester in the company of celebrities, representations of naked women. Giorgione? Renoir? Picasso? Not really. If Epstein occasionally falls for master works, it is in the form of cheap copies, and always according to his strict criteria. Fatal woman by Kees van Dongen (purchased for $275), or The Massacre of the Innocents (1591) by Cornelis van Haarlem of which he purchased, for $1,999, a large format copy for his ranch in New Mexico. With Édouard Manet, Epstein does not embarrass himself, he reframes Lunch on the Grass ffocusing the gaze on the woman’s body. In 2013, five years after his first conviction, he purchased a photo of David Hamilton. In the same vein, we are not surprised, when reading the files in the file, to find enthusiastic conversations on extracts from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, gritty references to Degas, jokes about Balthus.
Epstein’s houses therefore offer a gallery of mediocre works. Taken individually, they could appear to be simple nudes of lesser quality, but together they lead back to the obsessions of the master of the place. In the stairwell, the bronze silhouette of a naked woman is clinging to a rope. The work of a Frenchman, Arnaud Kasper, was covered with a wedding dress. Perhaps a nod to Marcel Duchamp, a sort of superposition of Naked going down the stairsof The Bride and, more mournful here, Transition from virgin to bride ? In one of the rooms, the visitor is faced with a representation of Bill Clinton in a blue dress and red pumps. Referring to the Monica Lewinsky affair, this work was painted by Petrina Ryan-Kleid. She is a student at the New York Academy of Art where Epstein came to find future painters, even prey. According to the testimony of Limor Gasko on the Artnet site: “ They took him to see the students so that he could buy our works. In reality, what he was looking for was cheap nudes. » Maria Farmer, recruited into the school, will go from art advisor to the financier to victim. She and her sister were the first to alert the FBI of Epstein’s actions in 1996.
Close circle, dubious cronies
“Collector of people. » This is how former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak described his friend Jeffrey Epstein in a letter, a sort of gift on request, written for the pedophile’s 63rd birthday. From his inner circle to his professional relationships, he cultivated relationships with luminaries, particularly in the sphere of art. With his friend Woody Allen, for example, he recounts an escapade in 2012: “They opened the Musée d’Orsay just for Woody and me!” It’s crazy… We had a great time. I’m thinking of your bare butt on all fours, though. Especially since Degas drew so many women. » Another close friend, the artist Andres Serrano, met in the 1990s, prides himself in the American press on having taken the last photo of the billionaire.
Epstein’s personal emails show his desire to visit artists’ studios. Jeff Koons is one of them, he will even accept a dinner in 2013. The attendance at these evenings, attested by published documents, has caused a series of resignations within the boards of cultural bodies such as MoMA or the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Art for money
This infiltration of the art world is at the heart of his activity. For tax and representation reasons, the art and business communities are closely linked to the United States. Private funds are the main financiers of culture. Epstein knows where to look for his clients. Leslie Wexner, the head of Victoria’s Secret, received his advice from 1997 to 2007. Leon Black and Ronald Lauder – the one who allegedly whispered in Trump’s ear the need to annex Greenland – also benefited from Epstein’s financial, tax and estate advice for their joint art collection.
We know thanks to newspaper investigations since 2019 that he lied about donations from the Epstein VI Foundation (VI for Virgin Islands where many sex crimes were committed). For example, NBC News in 2019 refuted donations it said it had made to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Reuters press agency challenged, in 2015, the funding it allocated for the restoration of a work by Mark Rothko kept at MIT.
