Rome, Italy:
Italian police have identified a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in a Naples flat and returned it to a church that had no concept it had been stolen.
Officers mentioned late Monday they had arrested the 36-year-old owner of the apartment on suspicion of getting stolen goods, following the painting was identified in his bedroom cupboard.
Depicting Jesus Christ with his hand raised in a blessing and holding a crystal orb, the painting is component of the Doma Museum collection inside the San Domenico Maggiore church complicated in Naples.
It is a copy of Leonardo’s popular work that in 2017 became the most pricey painting ever sold, fetching $450 million at a Christie’s auction.
But the collection has been without the need of guests for months due to coronavirus restrictions and no one had reported it missing.
It was not quickly clear how the police came to learn the theft of the painting, but they mentioned it was a “particularly complex operation”.
“The painting was found on Saturday thanks to a brilliant and diligent police operation,” mentioned Naples prosecutor Giovanni Melillo.
“There was no complaint on the matter and in fact we contacted the (church) prior, who was not aware of its disappearance, as the room where the painting is kept has not been open for three months.”
The oil painting is believed to be by artist Giacomo Alibrandi and dates to the early 1500s.
Commissioned theft
Having returned the painting to the church, police are now investigating how it was stolen in the 1st location, as there was no sign of a break-in, Melillo mentioned.
“Whoever took the painting wanted it, and it is plausible that it was a commissioned theft by an organisation working in the international art trade,” he added.
Video pictures released by police showed an empty wall inside a massive niche exactly where the artwork had been housed, in an alcove behind heavy wooden doors locked with a crucial.
The arrested man reportedly mentioned he had purchased the painting in a flea market place.
San Domenico Maggiore, which has been the victim of thefts in the previous, homes numerous vital artworks. Some, like paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael and Titian, have been moved to museums in Naples.
Leonardo’s original Salvator Mundi and its copy have been shown with each other in Naples in 2015 in the course of an exhibit organised for a pay a visit to by Pope Francis to the city.
Two years later, the painting attributed to Da Vinci was purchased at auction for a record $450 million by an unknown purchaser, creating it the most pricey work ever sold at auction.
Christie’s auction property later mentioned that Abu Dhabi’s division of culture had acquired the work and it would be shown at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The painting has in no way been noticed in public considering that and its existing whereabouts are unknown.
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