The Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence is a painting of the nativity of Jesus from 1609 by Italian painter Caravaggio. It has been missing since 1969 when it was stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. Investigators believe the painting changed hands among the Sicilian Mafia in the decades following the robbery and may still be hidden. A replica was commissioned in 2015 and now hangs in the altar.
The painting was completed by Italian painter Caravaggio in Syracuse in 1609 and later moved to Palermo. [1] It was believed to have been painted in Sicily, one year before he died. [2] It depicts the nativity of Jesus, with saints Francis of Assisi and Lawrence among other figures surrounding Mary and the newborn Jesus. [3] [2] The painting is about 2.7 metres high and two metres wide. [4] On the night of 17–18 October 1969, [5] two thieves stole the painting from its home in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. [4] They cut the painting from its frame, [2] [4] and also took a carpet from the oratory which authorities believe was used to roll up the painting. [1]
The theft is considered one of the most significant art crimes in history. [2] The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) listed it among their "Top Ten Art Crimes" in 2005. [6] Italian police, Interpol, and the FBI have all worked towards locating the painting. [1] Its value has been variously estimated at US$20 million [7] and £20 million; [8] however, black market resale values are typically significantly less than fair market prices, at perhaps a tenth of its estimated value. [9] As of 2005, Italian authorities believe the painting remains in Sicily and is hidden somewhere between Palermo and Bagheria. [1]
Theories differ on whether the thieves were amateurs or professionals, [5] [10] but investigators generally agree that the Sicilian Mafia has largely been responsible for its subsequent movements. [10] [11] One Mafia informant recalled seeing it being used as a floor mat by boss Salvatore Riina. [4] Another account said that Riina showed it off at meetings. [11]
In 2005, Mafia member Francesco Marino Mannoia told investigators that he was involved in the theft. [1] He claimed that the painting was stolen on commission, and the private buyer wept and called off the sale when he saw how damaged it was from the robbery. [5] [8] Mannoia has not given clues to its location. [1] [8] A Carabinieri art protection unit in Rome believed Mannoia was recalling a different painting and devised another theory. [5] They believe the robbery was carried out by amateurs who learned about the painting's value on a television program about artifacts in Italy that aired a few weeks before. Amazed at its value and knowing the altar was only guarded by an elderly janitor, they saw an opportunity to steal it. [5] After the robbery, the Mafia learned of the theft and intercepted the painting. It was moved from boss to boss, including Rosario Riccobono, eventually reaching the hands of Gerlando Alberti. [5] Alberti attempted a sale but could not complete it before being arrested in 1981. He supposedly buried the painting along with drugs and cash, but his nephew showed the burial location to authorities and no painting was present. [5]
In 2009, Mafia informant Gaspare Spatuzza told authorities that when he was in prison with Mafia member Filippo Graviano in 1999, Graviano told him the painting was destroyed in the 1980s. [8] According to Spatuzza, Graviano said the painting was given to the Pullara family in Palermo who hid it in a barn. Inside the barn, it was slowly destroyed by rats and pigs, and so was burnt. [8] This story is doubted by some authorities. [10]
In 2018, informant Gaetano Grado told authorities the painting was stolen by amateur criminals but then acquired by the Mafia and given to Gaetano Badalamenti, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission. The informant claims Badalamenti sold the painting to a Swiss dealer and told him it would be cut into pieces for transportation. The dealer he identified is now deceased. [12]
Some assert that the painting was sold to a collector in eastern Europe or South Africa. [1] [8] Another theory claims that it was destroyed in the 1980 Irpinia earthquake in southern Italy, shortly before a planned black market sale. [4] [8]
In 2015, television broadcasting company Sky commissioned a replica to replace an enlarged photograph that hung in the altar. [10] The replica job was handed to Factum Arte, [10] a company known for using sophisticated technology to create high-quality replicas. They had previously done so with the tomb of Tutankhamun. [10] The team used slides and photographs of the painting, including black-and-white glass plate negatives of the painting from its last restoration in 1951. [2] [4] Other Caravaggio paintings were examined so the company could replicate his style. [2] Sky produced a documentary about the original painting and the reproduction. [2] The completed replica was hung in the altar on 12 December 2015. [11]
In 2022, at midnight on Christmas Eve, Vanessa Beecroft unveiled her "personal interpretation" of Caravaggio's Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence at the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Sicily. The work will remain on display above the altar of San Lorenzo until 8 January and will then be exhibited in the ante-oratory until 17 October 2023. [13]
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Giovanni Falcone was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian Mafia. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the Maxi Trial in 1986–1987, on 23 May 1992, Falcone was assassinated by the Corleonesi Mafia in the Capaci bombing, on the A29 motorway near the town of Capaci.
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra, also referred to as simply Mafia, is a criminal society and criminal organization originating on the island of Sicily and dates back to the mid-19th century. It is an association of gangs which sell their protection and arbitration services under a common brand. The Mafia's core activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions.
Stefano Bontade, born Stefano Bontate, was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo. He was also known as the Principe di Villagrazia − the area of Palermo he controlled − and Il Falco. He had links with several powerful politicians in Sicily, and with prime minister Giulio Andreotti. In 1981 he was killed by the rival faction within Cosa Nostra, the Corleonesi. His death sparked a brutal Mafia War that left several hundred mafiosi dead.
Matteo Messina Denaro, also known as Diabolik, was a Sicilian Mafia boss from Castelvetrano. He was considered to be one of the new leaders of the Sicilian mob after the arrests of Bernardo Provenzano on 11 April 2006 and Salvatore Lo Piccolo in November 2007. The son of a Mafia boss, Denaro became known nationally on 12 April 2001 when the magazine L'Espresso put him on the cover with the headline: Ecco il nuovo capo della Mafia.
Piersanti Mattarella was an Italian politician who was assassinated by the Mafia while he held the position of President of the Regional Government of Sicily. A member of Christian Democracy, he was the older brother of Sergio Mattarella, who has been President of Italy since 2015.
Antonino "Nino" Giuffrè is an Italian former mafioso who later became a justice collaborator. The head of the mandamento of Caccamo, he was the second-highest ranked member of Cosa Nostra. He became one of the most important Mafia turncoats, or pentito, after his arrest in April 2002, providing further information about its inner workings.
Rosario Riccobono was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the boss of Partanna Mondello, a suburb of Palermo, his native city. In 1974 he became a member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission. During the 1970s Riccobono was one of the most influential members of the Commission, and the Cosa Nostra's king of the drug trafficking.
Francesco Marino Mannoia is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who became a pentito in 1989. His nickname was Mozzarella. He is considered to be one of the most reliable government witnesses against the Mafia. Antimafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, who was first to interrogate him, recalled Marino Mannoia as an intelligent and reliable witness.
Gaspare Mutolo is a Sicilian mafioso, also known as "Asparino". In 1992 he became a pentito. He was the first mafioso who spoke about the connections between Cosa Nostra and Italian politicians. Mutolo's declarations contributed to the indictment of Italy's former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and to an understanding of the context of the 1992 Mafia murders of the politician Salvo Lima and the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Giuseppe Graviano is an Italian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He also was one of the men of the death squad that murdered Salvatore Contorno's relatives. He is currently serving several life sentences. He and his three siblings became members of the Sicilian Mafia Commission for the Brancaccio-Ciaculli mandamento, substituting Giuseppe Lucchese who was in prison.
Santino Di Matteo, also known as Mezzanasca, is an Italian former member of the Sicilian Mafia from the town of Altofonte in the province of Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
Giovanni "John" Gambino was an Italian-born American mobster. Born in Palermo, Sicily, he became a made member of the Gambino crime family in 1975 and a capodecina or captain, and head of the crime family's Sicilian faction, appointed by family boss John Gotti in 1986, according to Mafia turncoat Sammy Gravano.
Gaspare Spatuzza is a Sicilian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He was an assassin for the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano who headed the Mafia family of Brancaccio. After the arrest of the Gravianos in January 1994, he apparently succeeded them as the regent of the Mafia family. He was arrested in 1997 and started to cooperate with the judicial authorities in 2008. In his testimony, he stated that media tycoon and then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a deal with the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 that put the country in the hands of Cosa Nostra.
Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi was a Roman Catholic priest in the rough Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio. He openly challenged the Sicilian Mafia who controlled the neighbourhood and was killed by them on his 56th birthday. His life story has been retold in a book, Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso (2013), and portrayed in a film, Come Into the Light in 2005. He is the first person killed by the Mafia who has been beatified by the Catholic Church.
The via D'Amelio bombing was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia Italian magistrate, and five members of his police escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina.
The Oratory of Saint Lawrence is a Baroque oratory of Palermo. It is located near the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, in the quarter of the Kalsa, within the historic centre of Palermo.
The term State-Mafia Pact describes an alleged series of negotiations between important Italian government officials and Cosa Nostra members that began after the period of the 1992 and 1993 terror attacks by the Sicilian Mafia with the aim to reach a deal to stop the attacks; according to other sources and hypotheses, it began even earlier. In summary, the supposed cornerstone of the deal was an end to "the Massacre Season" in return for a reduction in the detention measures provided for Italy's Article 41-bis prison regime. 41-bis was the law by which the Antimafia pool led by Giovanni Falcone had condemned hundreds of mafia members to the "hard prison regime". The negotiation hypothesis has been the subject of long investigations, both by the courts and in the media. In 2021, the Court of Appeal of Palermo acquitted a close associate of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, while upholding the sentences of the mafia bosses. This ruling was confirmed by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation in 2023.
Giovanni Ravalli was an Italian military officer who was imprisoned for war crimes he committed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. Following a pardon, he served as police prefect of Palermo; during his tenure, he investigated the theft of Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.
Media related to Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence by Caravaggio at Wikimedia Commons
