After the war Levi met the artist and frame-maker F.A. Pollak and subsequently began to collect examples of antique frames. He later recognised that 16th-century Dutch frames could be dated precisely from the profiles of their mouldings when compared to a sequence of fixed points provided by dated paintings retaining their original frames. This systematic approach was to form the basis for Levi's subsequent career, and in 1950 he set up his own workshop. The intellectual approach adopted by Levi was unusual at that time, given that the Modern movement was increasingly dominating public museums and galleries (for example
Franco Albini's 1950 decision to remove the frames from the
Old Master paintings in the
Palazzo Bianco and display them against white walls). However, collectors such as Antoine Seilern and Sir
Brinsley Ford kept to traditional values and employed Levi regularly. Few public collections followed their examples until the late 1970s. It was Levi who first reconstructed the machine needed to recreate the black ripple moulding frames for reframing of Dutch 17th-century paintings. One of Levi's greatest successes after his retirement, and in collaboration with William Adair, was the identification of the 11 paintings needed to reassemble
Filippo Mazzola’s polyptych that formed the altarpiece in the church of S Maria delle Grazie at Cortemaggiore. Levi had purchased the frame in 1967 and his role in and generosity in donating it were recognised in 2003 when he was awarded the rank of
Cavaliere. Levi married Paula Fuchs in 1951, he had three sons and two daughters and died in
Reading. == Sources ==