STOLEN 500-YEAR-OLD LEONARDO DA VINCI PAINTING RECOVERED IN ITALY

Wed 20 January 2021:

Italian police has found a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in a Naples flat and returned it to a museum.

Officers said late Monday they had arrested the 36-year-old owner of the apartment on suspicion of receiving stolen goods, after the painting was found in his bedroom cupboard.

Depicting Jesus Christ with his hand raised in a blessing and holding a crystal orb, the painting is part of the Doma Museum collection within the San Domenico Maggiore church complex in Naples.

It is a copy of Leonardo’s work that in 2017 became the most expensive painting ever sold, fetching $450m (£330m) at a Christie’s auction.

But the museum has been shut for months due to coronavirus restrictions and nobody had reported it missing.

“The painting was found on Saturday thanks to a brilliant and diligent police operation,” said 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 the artist Giacomo Alibrandi and dates to the early 1500s.

Having returned the painting to the church, police are now investigating how it was stolen in the first place, as there was no sign of a break-in, Melillo said.

“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 images released by police showed an empty wall inside a large niche where the artwork had been housed, in an alcove behind heavy wooden doors locked with a key.