[CPProt.net] Police close in on £20m Caravaggio

[MSN CPPnet]

Police close in on £20m Caravaggio
John Follain, Rome

June 5, 2005
 
ITALIAN police believe that they may be close to tracking down one of the
world’s most valuable missing artworks — a Caravaggio not seen since it was
stolen from a Sicilian church more than 30 years ago. 
The fate of the Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence, painted in 1609
and worth an estimated £20m, has been the source of rumour since 1969 when
two petty thieves cut it from its frame in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in
Palermo. 
 
The art squad of the carabinieri, Italy’s paramilitary police, immediately
launched an investigation. But the mafia is believed to have got to the
painting first. 

Colonel Fernando Musella, who has been on the painting’s trail for nine
years, said last week that a source in an unspecified eastern European
country had indicated that he knew of the painting’s whereabouts. 

“We are verifying this lead and we hope to meet this person,” Musella said.
“Our information is that the painting is still in Italy and that it is
intact save for some slight damage in a corner.” 

The new lead is the fruit of years of discreet approaches to the men of
honour. “I tell them the theft was so long ago that nobody can be jailed for
it today and all that interests me is recovering a work of art,” Musella
said. “Sometimes that gets them to open up a little.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/