Caravaggios' Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi
•Caravaggio’s “Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis” (seen on the left) was stolen from the Church of San Lorenzo, in Palermo by Cosa Nostra in 1969. The theft prompted the foundation of the world’s first art police, the Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Italy.
Recently a renewed interest has been surrounding the famous Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi by Caravaggio stolen in the night between 17th and 18th October 1969 from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. During all these years the investigations have never stopped and are still very active between mysteries and hypotheses, but a revived interest is always positive to prevent this marvellous canvas from falling into obscurity.
An “insult” to the Italian artistic heritage consumed forty years ago, when a mafia commando stole this oil on canvas (2.68m x 1.97m), executed by the Lombard artist in 1609, a year before his death in Porto Ercole.
Since that night all efforts to return the masterpiece have been vain. General Roberto Conforti, until 2002 captain of the Carabinieri unit for the protection of artistic heritage, on various occasions had pointed out that his men were hunting the thieves of Caravaggio’s Nativity with the same commitment with which they would hunt a famous fugitive.
During the investigations the Mafioso turned informant Francesco Marino Mannoia, who confessed to being one of the authors of the crime, claimed that the painting would have been destroyed during the theft in which the canvas was taken down from its frame with a razor and then rolled up to transport it more easily. Furthermore, he added that these operations ruined the masterpiece and that when the buyer saw it he started to cry. For this reason the work was destroyed, as it had become unsellable. It seems incredible that the mafia could have had a Caravaggio destroyed. According to the police forces, the informant got confused with the theft of another painting which took place in the same period, in a church near the Oratory.
The most clamorous news was told by Giovanni Brusca, another Mafioso turned informant like Mannoia, who claimed that the mafia, after the special anti-mafia laws introduced after the death of Falcone and Borsellino in 1992, tried to “negotiate” with the Italian State: stolen works in exchange for the amendment of the 41 bis, a law according to which members of the mafia must be sentenced to do hard prison and be banned from having any communication with the outside.
The Carabinieri unit, thanks to the “tip-offs” of some informants, retraced the movements of the painting from 1969 to 1981. After a few failed attempts to sell it to some collectors, the canvas would have been buried in the countryside of Palermo, with five kilos of cocaine and a few million dollars, by the drug dealer Gerlando Alberti. But the iron case with the treasure was no longer in the place indicated by the informant Vincenzo La Piana, the boss’s grandson. The mafia would have had it taken away before the Carabinieri arrived. According to the investigations, the theft would have been handled by an important figure of the so-called “underdog” mafia, maybe to gain credit with respect to the élite of Cosa Nostra.
After all these years the theft of Caravaggio’s Nativity with saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi remains an unsolved mystery and the painting has been included in the list of the ten most wanted masterpieces by the police in all the world. The estimated value of the work is about 30 million euros, but this is a rough estimate: a work of this level is practically priceless.
Therefore, after forty years, what happened to Caravaggio’s work is still wrapped in mystery. And the large frame at the back of the main altar of the Oratory of Saint Lawrence is still desolately empty. Also for this reason an entrepreneur from Turin who works in the aluminium sector, owner of an “author’s fake” of the Nativity, complete with the certificate of Pitti Arte Florence, painted in 2000 by the master Stefano Pessione, expressed his intention to donate the work to display it in the place where Caravaggio’s masterpiece was stolen. “My family – explained the entrepreneur – bought it some years ago at an exhibition of author’s fakes in Cortina. It is such a perfect copy that when we displayed it in a gallery in Turin with the intention of selling it, the Carabinieri initially thought that it was the original”.
After clarifications, the Turinese owner expressed the intention to donate the painting to the Oratory of Saint Lawrence: “But until now – he explained – we have had no reply, probably due to the slowness of bureaucracy, but my family and I believe that even the exhibition of a copy can be useful to prevent a great work from being removed from our memory”.
