Everyone knows the painting Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence AKA The Adoration, which was painted in 1609, a year before the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio died. After the theft of the painting in October 1969, the plot has thickened yet again. ”There have been all sorts of theories as to the painting’s fate: that it was destroyed, that it was sold to a collector in Eastern Europe or to an Italian collector in South Africa, that it was buried in an earthquake in Naples or remained in the hands of the Mafia. The painting has been on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Top Ten Art Crimes” list,” Milton Esterow (Editor and publisher of Art News) tells us.
The painting had been hidden in a barn in Palermo in the ’80s and it was said to have been “ruined, eaten by rats and hogs and therefore burned,” says Gaspare Spatuzza, who went to jail in 1997 on multiple counts of murder and who recently became an informer last year.
My feeling is that nothing so precious would have been left to such negligent harm, especially to be eaten away by rats in an old farmhouse. I say the painting is safe in hiding and the Sicilian Underground is going through great lengths to keep the paintings’ condition and whereabouts a secret. Like most artists, there is a hidden element in their history. Aside from Caravaggio’s talent as an artist he was also, as Simon Schama wrote in Power of Art, “the unpredictable, sword–carrying, dagger–wielding eccentric with the hair–trigger temper.”
The much-sought-after private detective based in London, Charley Hill, was asked why the Mafia would steal the painting .”It was a trophy crime; they stole it as a trophy. They do it all the time. They often loot churches in southern Italy and Sicily.”
Throughout the history of high art theft, many works have been recovered and had little enough damage to be displayed again while others have never been found. Edvard Munch’s Scream and Madonna, for example had been the target of several thefts once in 1994 and agian a decade later in 2004. Fortunatley, both paintgs were recovered.
Anyone remember the Gardner Museum Heist in 1990? 13 pieces were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston by two men dressed as police officers. The total of the paintings in todays value is more than $300 million, declaring it one of the largest Heists in history.
“Once inside, the thieves ripped a Vermeer, three Rembrandts — including his only seascape — five Degas drawings, and a Manet from their wall placements, smashing them out of their frames and leaving shards of glass and remnants of canvas behind. The thieves took some of the museum’s greatest treasures but left behind some even more valuable objects. When they were done for the night, they made two trips to their car with the loot. Then they vanished. Where the paintings were, empty frames now fill the museum’s walls.”
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