Demosthenis C. Severis

At the end of 2009 Demosthenis C. Severis decided to give the whole of the Severis Collection of Cypriot antiquities on long-term loan to the Constantine Leventis Wing of the Leventis Municipal Museum in Nicosia, which opened in January 2010¹. He added previously unpublished pieces as a supplement to the second edition of the collection's catalogue and contributed to its cost¹.

The Prologue he signed gives the collection's history. His mother, Leto Severis, formed it from the early 1940s over 28 years, to July 1974; it reached over 2,500 inventoried pieces, which were kept in a study gallery at the family house in Nicosia, and about 600 were lost to looting after the family left the north¹. Vassos Karageorghis wrote that "Demosthenis Severis, the present owner of the Collection, provided every facility for the study"¹. The first edition of 1999 came from the Costakis and Leto Severis Foundation¹. Karageorghis called Chris Phylactou, who made the same gesture of lending his collection, his "contemporary and friend"³.

Hermary, reviewing the 2004 Geneva catalogue of Cypriot art, wrote that it was paid for by the Severis Foundation, whose president he names as D. Severis, and gave the president's ties with Geneva as the reason². Karageorghis wrote of the collection that it was formed mainly under the "silent accord" and may include material from Souskiou, Marki, Kotchati and Alaas¹. Hardy, in a 2014 study of the illicit trade during the Cypriot civil war, stated that 288 catalogued pieces of the collection were "probably looted during the civil war", 211 of them with no information at all⁴.