Might Caravaggio's 'Nativity' be found?
June 3 2018
Picture: Guardian
It's unlikely, but there's been some excitement in the news at reports that an aged mobster has told Italian police the painting was offered to a Swiss art dealer after it was stolen in 1969. Reports The Guardian:
The new lead on the whereabouts of the 17th-century painting – a depiction of the newborn Christ on a bed of straw, painted in the chiaroscuro technique – came from a former mobster-turned-informant, who revealed to Italian investigators that it had once been held by Gaetano Badalamenti, a Sicilian “boss of bosses” who was known as one of the ringleaders of an infamous heroin trafficking network in the US called the Pizza Operation.
Investigators announced this week that Gaetano Grado, the mafia informant, said Badalamenti had been put in touch with an art dealer in Switzerland after obtaining the work – also known as The Adoration – from another mafia boss.
Never trust a Swiss art dealer.
