Appointed curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, Sgarbi is also a columnist for il Giornale and works as an art critic for Panorama and IO Donna.

A popular ecletic and mediatic phenomenon, Sgarbi is well known for his glib, verbal aggressiveness, and insults, which often led to libels.

[1] An eclectic, controversial, and often discussed character,[2][3] Sgarbi has built his career around art but also covered heterogeneous roles and positions in different sectors, publishing numerous works.

On a few episodes, Sgarbi furiously attacked the Italian judges working on the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, and criticized the use of preventive detention in prison; in particular, he declared that many people had been arrested without a proper warrant and that some innocent people had been unjustly accused, and denounced what he saw as the excessive power of investigative magistrates, the severe Article 41-bis prison regime, and the damage done to the regional economy by organized crime investigations.

[6] Sgarbi also became famous for repeatedly shouting capra ("goat"), which was first uttered during the 23 March 1989 episode of the Maurizio Costanzo Show, as a way to avoid libels due to his insulting language.

[10] In a series of interviews given on 15–19 July 1994 to Avvenire and il Giornale, Sgarbi described the Mani pulite judges, who were working on the Tangentopoli scandal, as murderers and part of a criminal association.

As part of the Pole of Good Government, he campaigned actively in Southern Italy for judicial reforms after Tangentopoli, such as the failed Biondi Decree.

[1] In 2008, Sgarbi served as Cabinet Member for Culture, Arts, and Sports in Milan's municipal government for six months when mayor Letizia Moratti terminated his mandate as she saw him "unfit for the job".

[22] That same year, supported by the 2002-refounded Christian Democracy and the Union of the Centre parties, Sgarbi became mayor of the Sicilian city of Salemi, a position from which he resigned in February 2012.

[1] In an attempt to re-populate the city since the 1968 Belice earthquake that hit Salemi's ancient centre, parts of which date back more than 1,000 years to the Islamic occupation, under the suggestion of photographer and friend Oliviero Toscani, Sgarbi proposed to give historic houses for €1 each.

[23] While mayor of Salemi, Sgarbi was removed from his role and the administration of the city was commissioned after he failed to acknowledge Sicilian Mafia interferences in his cabinet.

[24] According to the then interior minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, Sgarbi had responsibilities for the infiltration of mafia in the management of the city, for example through the creation of fake protocols and making the administrative process slower.

[28][29] In November 2017, Sgarbi was chosen by the centre-right coalition Sicilian president-elect Nello Musumeci as new Regional Assessor of Cultural Heritage.

[33][34][35] In 2022, he presented the symbol of #IoApro Rinascimento with the group of restaurateurs and traders disobedient to the restrictions imposed by the government and the obligation of the Green Pass.

[1] As the undersecretary of culture, Sgarbi said in August 2023 that some of Italy's top jobs should be reserved for Italians and that the Meloni government had introduced stricter criteria in the hiring process over the language skills of applicants.

[41] In 1995, Sgarbi co-founded the Federalist Union,[46] which he left to join the Pannella–Sgarbi List but abandoned it before the 1996 elections,[47][48][49] being re-elected with Forza Italia through the Pole of Good Government.

[45] In 2000, Sgarbi established the Secular Pole to guarantee representation in the following year's elections for the PLI and the Radical Party, with which he was allied as part of Berlusconi's coalition in 1996.

[45] In 2006, Sgarbi ran for the Consumers' List, which was part of The Union, the centre-left coalition that narrowly defeated Berlusconi, whom he once defined as the "anal birth caused by Di Pietro",[45] without being elected.

[58] Alongside Giulio Tremonti, Sgarbi founded Renaissance in 2017,[59][60][61] initially running for president of Sicily, before switching his support to eventual centre-right coalition winner Nello Musumeci.

[62][63] In 2018, Renaissance federated with Forza Italia but subsequently returned to being an autonomous political group that presented itself at a local level over the years.

"[77] Although Sgarbi has strongly defended the role of Catholicism as a foundational element of Italian culture, his relations with faith and religion are complicated.

[85][86][87] In February 2019, Sgarbi declared that he believed in the existence of God and that the definitive proof is its art and all the benevolent manifestations of man.

"[26] In September 2019, Sgarbi stated that he considers himself a cultural Catholic, seeing Christianity more as a philosophy of man than a religion, according to which the idea of God is nothing more than a principle of perfection that pushes men to pursue goals higher.

[92][93] Since at least 2022,[94] Sgarbi has been accused of illicit export of works and laundering stolen goods,[95][96] in particular a 17th-century and Baroque artwork that disappeared from a castle in 2013.

[97][98][99] This latest investigation, which began in 2024, attracted significant international attention, with many observers pointing to the silence of the prime minister Giorgia Meloni.

[100][101] Sgarbi, who denied the allegations, resigned as undersecretary for culture in February 2024, citing an anti-trust investigation,[102] after he was paid for public events, including books presentations and conferences, despite being a member of Parliament.

In 1996, he was convicted for the crime of forgery and aggravated and continuous fraud against the state due to the production of false documents and absenteeism in the 1989–1990 period while he was an employee of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, with the qualification of artistic and cultural heritage official of Veneto, and at the time of his participation in the Maurizio Costanzo Show.

In 2017, he made several comments about football figures, such as Antonio Conte, Luciano Moggi, and Diego Armando Maradona.

[120] Sgarbi is the author of numerous catalogues, monographs, and books on criticism and art history, including among the latest Viaggio sentimentale nell'Italia dei desideri (2010), Piene di grazia.

Il tesoro d'Italia IV (2016), Rinascimento (2017, with Giulio Tremonti), Dal mito alla favola bella.