Giuseppe Panza was born in Milan in 1923 to a prominent family of Italian wine merchants. He studied law and entered the real estate business, but soon became devoted to his true love: acquiring contemporary art for himself and for the leading museums of the world. He credited an interior 'thermometer' that enabled him to spot up-and-coming movements, artists, and works of art, and over the course of 50 years and hundreds of purchases he was rarely wrong.