It's a 52-year-old mystery: who got their hands on Caravaggio's Nativity in the San Lorenzo oratory in Palermo?
" The Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence " was probably painted in 1609, a year before the death of its author, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, better known under the name of Caravaggio. Staging a birth of Christ, the painting 2.70 meters high and 2 meters wide overlooked the altar of the San Lorenzo oratory in Palermo, when it was stolen on the night of October 17-18, 1969. The Thieves would also have seized a carpet, probably to roll up the canvas, cut in its frame with precision.
At the San Lorenzo oratory, the trauma is intact. "Having stolen the Nativity, how could one have committed such an infamy?" , laments Father Cosimo Scordato, priest of the diocese of Palermo, in the report at the top of this article, produced in Sicily. "A birth, a baby, a mother, he says. It's impossible to be a reason. And yet it has taken place" .
The theft was not too risky: in 1969, the oratory of Palermo was hardly supervised except by a concierge. At the time, a few months before the events, the priest of the parish had moreover tried in vain to prevent an Italian television report on this "forgotten masterpiece", which he feared gives ideas to thieves . Very quickly, it was the mafia that was suspected of the theft. A few months after this, a fragment of canvas had been sent to the priest, accompanied by a demand for ransom, which is exactly Cosa Nostra's modus operandi for a kidnapping. The authorities had not acted, and the trail had died out.
Confessions of a repentant: has the painting been burned?
Several years after the fact, the web was talking about it again during the confessions of a repentant of the mafia. Nicknamed Mozzarella, both for his love of cheese and for his pale complexion, Francesco Mannoia at the end of 1989 began speaking to anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, who considered him an "intelligent and reliable witness" . He then confessed to being part of the little gang that had stolen the painting in 1969 - amidst a litany of much bloodier crimes. Mozzarella had begun to speak to escape revenge from Salvatore Riina, the feared leader of Cosa Nostra.
A theft committed by the mafia ... or by amateurs?
"Mannoia must have been 17 years old" , testifies a former anti-Mafia policeman, "with an accomplice, they would have cut the canvas, then would have rolled it up and taken it in a small truck . " "He told me , " continues Maurizio. Ortolan, who participated in the interrogations, "showed the painting to a Swiss art dealer, but when unrolling it, a lot of paint fragments came off, and the canvas was ruined. Then the thieves would have burned it ".
Many versions have followed since. For some riflemen involved in the investigation, the memory of "Mozzarella" is mistaken, and it confuses it with another painting theft. That of Caravaggio was allegedly perpetrated by amateur thieves, effectively incited by the RAI report. The mafia would in fact have "intercepted" the web when these laymen sought to sell it. It is a boss of the mafia who would have recovered the masterpiece of Caravaggio for himself and exhibited it during the meetings of the godfathers of Cosa Nostra.
Eaten by rats and pigs?
Other stories circulate about the fate of this canvas, which has never ceased to haunt the Sicilians: it would have been eaten by rats and pigs on the farm where it was hidden, or destroyed during an earthquake. Italian authorities continue to investigate and hope for a new lead, and even the FBI has included the canvas among its list of most actively sought-after works. In today's market, Caravaggio's Nativity would be worth at least 100 million euros., or indeed sold to a wealthy collector who cannot, in fact, make himself known.
The canvas was reconstructed in 2015, using cutting-edge digital technology, and reinstalled above the altar of the San Lorenzo oratory. But the empty frame of the original canvas has been kept in another room, and it is in front of him that the president of the Sicilian Museums Association launches an appeal to the conscience of the one who currently owns the canvas: "That happened 52 years ago " , argues Bernardo Tortorici, " so the one who has the Nativity is probably at the end of his life. If he listens to me, let him come and relieve his conscience in front of God , it is time to do it, that it can end like in a fairy tale, that it returns this painting to the inhabitants of Palermo, to humanity and to Caravaggio " .
F. Senneville for LCI
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