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A stunning painting found by a junk dealer in the basement of a villa on the island of Capri is believed by experts to be an original piece by Pablo Picasso that was lost to time and could now be worth millions of dollars.
This story dates back further than 1962 but that’s the year when Luigi Lo Rosso, an Italian man who used to scour for treasure to sell in his family’s pawn shop in Pompeii, found the painting inside the basement of a villa on the island of Capri. He found the (potentially) priceless painting as a rolled-up canvas and unrolled it to discover an interesting painting of a woman.
Instead of selling it in his family’s pawn shop like other artifacts he would search for, the painting was placed in a cheap frame and hung on the wall after he gifted it to his wife. According to a recent report from CNN, art expert Luca Gentile Canal Marcante now believes the painting is an image of Dora Maar, the French photographer who a lover of Pablo Picasso.
When the painting was found in 1962, Luigi Lo Rosso didn’t think twice about the ‘Picasso’ signature in the upper left corner of the distorted figure painting. Pablo Picasso himself lived from 1881 to 1973 and though he began to gain fame as early as 1904 when he moved to Paris his name didn’t carry the same gravitas in 1962 as it does today.
Is This A Real (Lost) Picasso Painting? Is It Worth Millions?!?
The Lo Rosso family’s journey to certify this piece of art dates back decades. It began some time in the 1980s when Andrea Lo Rosso saw Pablo Picasso’s ‘Buste de femme Dora Maar’ in a textbook and came to learn that Picasso had spent time on the Isle of Capri in the 1950s.
According to CNN, the family started by contacting art historians, most of whom rebuffed the family and said it likely wasn’t legitimate. Those same art historians then ‘generously’ offered to take off the family’s hands…
The family then registered the piece with Italy’s patrimony police who authenticated it as the family’s possession after an investigation into whether or not it was stolen. And since 2019 is has sat in a vault until, according to CNN, last month when graphologist Cinzia Altieri certified Picasso’s signature as authentic and thus certified the painting itself as authentic.
On a personal note, I found this story particularly wild because my maternal grandfather apprenticed under Pablo Picasso, who also did bronze sculptures, in Italy for a period of time in the 1950s. My mother’s earliest memories were from the year or so abroad while her dad worked under Picasso and the timing could have possibly aligned/overlapped with the timing of this painting and it’s pretty cool to think that my grandfather might’ve had some personal connection to this piece and seen Pablo himself working on it.
What happens next?
It is now believed the painting is worth approximately $6.6 million based on the current market, according to CNN. The next step is for this painting to be certified by the Picasso Foundation in Paris which could raise the value even further.
There’s no indication how long that process may taken. Given that this saga dates back to 1962, it could presumably take a while but everything in life tends to move faster these days.
If certified by the Picasso Foundation, the family intends to sell it at auction. That certification could DOUBLE the value of the painting so there is a lot at stake here.
For more photographs of the rediscovered painting, be sure to check out the CNN report through the article link above.