The Mafia and the Missing Caravaggio
Caravaggio's Nativity hung in a church for 360 years. Then, one night, it disappeared. The true story of the art world's biggest cold case.
Palermo, 18 October 1969. Maria Gelfo climbs the steps of the Oratorio di San Lorenzo. Six in the morning. She has held the keys to the small baroque sanctuary for years, and her sister Concetta follows behind, carrying the bucket and cloths. Every morning, the same ritual. Open up, air the place, clean before mass.
Maria pushes the heavy wooden door. Steps inside. Freezes.
The frame above the altar is empty. A large gilded rectangle, gaping. A few scraps of canvas clinging to the nails. On the floor, tiny fragments of paint. The side window ajar, the lock torn away.
Maria screams. U’ quatru! The painting.
The two women stand rooted before the void. Three hundred and sixty years that canvas had hung there. Caravaggio’s Nativity. An immense work, taller than a cathedral door. Now vanished.
The carabinieri arrive, examine the forced window, gather what indices remain. The torrential rain during the night has washed everything away. In the alley, a ladder abandoned against the wall. Inside, the large carpet that adorned the floor has disappeared. An officer examines the frame. The edges are clean, sliced with a razor. No brutal tear. Disturbing precision. He turns to Maria. Did you hear anything during the night? She shakes her head. The storm drowned everything out.
Father Benedetto Rocco arrives running. Fifty-five years old, rector of the oratory for five years. He stops dead before the altar, stares at the empty frame. His lips tremble. For weeks, he had known. He had warned them, even begged.
Early October, unknown men had begun prowling near the chapel. Maria had seen them several times. They asked to enter, to see the Caravaggio up close. Rocco had immediately alerted the ecclesiastical authorities. That old side window, its lock that no longer closed properly, it needed securing. The Curia of Palermo had refused. No reason for alarm.
Worse still. End of summer, the state television RAI had turned up with its cameras for a documentary on the hidden treasures of Sicily. Rocco had firmly declined, warned the journalists. If the public learns that a Caravaggio hangs unprotected in a modest church in Palermo, theft becomes inevitable. The Superintendent of Fine Arts, Vincenzo Scuderi, had authorised the programme nonetheless. The footage had been broadcast. Now it was gone.
The investigation stalls from the first days. The entire neighbourhood observes the law of silence. The carabinieri question neighbours, known fences, art dealers. Nobody talks in Palermo.
January 1970. Three months after the theft. Rocco goes down to fetch his post one morning. A white envelope in his letterbox. No sender’s name. He turns it over in his hands, climbs back to his kitchen. Tears open the flap with his bread knife.
Inside, a typewritten sheet which he unfolds and reads.
The authors of the theft introduce themselves. Claim to possess the Caravaggio. Propose entering into negotiation for its return. Rocco reads through three times, his hands shaking. The letter demands a sign of good faith. He must publish a small advertisement in the Giornale di Sicilia, the local newspaper. The exact text follows, typed in capitals. A few bland lines that only the kidnappers can understand.
Rocco turns over the envelope. A photograph slips onto the table. He picks it up. The painting cut out, propped against a white wall that cannot be identified. The folds in the canvas are visible. Proof that they have the work in their hands.
Rocco pulls on his coat, runs to Scuderi’s. The superintendent who had authorised the programme examines the photo at length, rereads the text. Hesitates. Says he must consult his superiors. Rocco waits three days. Finally, Scuderi accepts. The coded advertisement appears in the newspaper the following week, a banal message of a few lines lost among the small ads.
Rocco watches for the post each morning for a fortnight. On 15 February, a second envelope arrives. He takes it up to his room, closes the door, opens it.
The tone has changed, sharper, more threatening. Between the sheets, something falls onto the bed. A tiny rectangle of canvas, two centimetres by three. Rocco picks it up carefully, recognises the ancient texture, the cracks in the varnish. A fragment of the painting, cut from the edge like one slices off a hostage’s ear. The letter demands a second advertisement, same newspaper, same procedure.
Rocco puts his coat back on, rushes to Scuderi’s. Places the letter and the fragment on the superintendent’s desk. Scuderi examines the piece of canvas at length, turns it between his fingers. Then he raises his head, looks at Rocco differently. Something in his expression has changed. He asks a strange question. Padre, how can I be certain you are not implicated in this affair?
Rocco remains frozen. Pardon?
Scuderi repeats. These letters arriving at your home. This fragment. How can I know you are not playing a role in this... negotiation?
The next day, two policemen ring at Rocco’s door. Please come with us to the station, Padre. Routine questions.
A metal desk, two chairs. An officer sits opposite him, takes out a notebook. How did you receive these letters? By post. Who knows your address? Everyone, I am the rector of the oratory. Do you have debts? No. Do you know the authors of the theft? No, of course not. The officer takes his fingerprints, notes everything, checks his bank accounts, digs through his past. The interrogation lasts hours.
Rocco returns home that same evening, cleared but humiliated. Embarrassed apologies are offered to him a few days later. But the second advertisement never appears in the newspaper. Scuderi has stopped everything out of fear, out of mistrust. The criminals, seeing nothing forthcoming, cease all contact. No more letters. Nothing.
The only chance of recovering the Caravaggio has just been aborted.
March 1970. The telephone rings at Rocco’s one evening. A voice he does not know. A colleague, a priest from Carini, the small town west of Palermo. The man speaks quickly, in a low voice. Padre, I need to tell you something. You cannot speak of it to anyone.
Rocco listens.
A painting had been stolen from the church in Carini a few months earlier. A worthless canvas, a local saint. The parish priest had turned to the local mafia to recover it. The gangsters, to help him, had summoned the priest to a back room in a café. A young affiliate had placed two photographs on the table. There you are, Padre. Tell us which is yours. In the first photo, the modest saint from Carini. In the second, without any possible doubt, Caravaggio’s Nativity.
The parish priest had indicated his painting in silence. Held his breath. Had said nothing about the other image. The young mafioso had gathered up the photos, left. Three days later, the Carini painting had returned, deposited during the night outside the church door.
Rocco remains motionless, the receiver pressed to his ear. You are certain? Absolutely certain, Padre. I clearly saw your Caravaggio in that photo.
The next day, Rocco goes to the police station. Asks to see the officer leading the investigation, recounts the story. Makes the connection immediately. Carini is located in the territory of Gaetano Badalamenti, the godfather of Cinisi. One of the most powerful bosses of Cosa Nostra, member of the Commission that coordinates all the mafia families of Sicily. He controls the heroin traffic to the United States. If anyone in Sicily can keep a Caravaggio at home, it is him.
The officer takes notes, promises to verify. Rocco goes home.
Nothing happens. No search, no investigation. In Palermo in 1970, attacking a godfather of this calibre without proof means signing one’s death warrant. The file containing Rocco’s statements disappears from the archives a few months later. Erased.
Palermo, 1971. An isolated villa in the hills above the city. Gaetano Badalamenti waits in his drawing room. The room is cool despite the Sicilian heat, the drawn curtains filter a white light. A man arrives from Lugano. Art dealer, specialising in stolen works. He crosses the room, shakes the godfather’s hand, sits down.
Badalamenti gives a signal. Two men enter carrying a roll of fabric, deposit it on the coffee table. Untie the cords, slowly unroll it.
The Nativity appears. The Swiss dealer leans forward, examines the surface. His eyes stop on the cracks, the missing flakes of paint, the tears. He asks for a chair, sits down, passes his hand over his face.
The turbulent theft, the night in the rain, the tight rolling in the carpet. A seventeenth-century canvas hardened over three hundred and sixty years cannot withstand being rolled up. The paint layer has shattered like glass. The Swiss man raises his head towards Badalamenti, shakes his head slowly. It is too damaged. The transaction cannot proceed under these conditions. I am sorry.
He stands, thanks him for the journey, leaves the villa.
The painting remains in Sicily.
The years that follow are nothing but a long silence punctuated by rumours. Repentant mafiosi will all tell the same thing. The Caravaggio passed from family to family, served as a trophy during secret meetings. A symbol of prestige. Some will claim it was hidden in a barn, gnawed by rats, then burnt. Others will say that a boss used it as a carpet. Still others will mention an earthquake, rubble, a cutting into pieces. Each version contradicts the previous one. Nobody really knows.
Badalamenti dies in prison in the United States in 2004. Rocco passes away in Palermo in 2013, aged ninety-six. He will have kept silent for decades, speaking openly only at the end of his life.
In 2018, the Palermo prosecutor’s office reopens the investigation. A former mafioso, Gaetano Grado, has spoken before the Antimafia Commission. He describes the meeting with the Swiss dealer, gives names, dates. The magistrates contact Interpol, the Swiss authorities, transmit the evidence. But after fifty years, almost all the protagonists are dead. The leads dissolve into time.
For forty-six years, the gilded frame remained hanging above the altar. Empty. In 2015, a Spanish team recreated a facsimile from old photographs, installed it in its place. Tourists can see the Nativity as it was. But it is only an image printed on new canvas.
The FBI values the painting at twenty million dollars. It appears on the list of the world’s most wanted works of art. Fifty-five years after the theft, no trace has resurfaced. The fragment sent to Rocco in 1970 has itself disappeared. The investigation remains open.
I had to chuckle when I finished reading this art tidbit. Your last two lines read: "The fragment sent to Rocco in 1970 has itself disappeared. The investigation remains open." It is followed by the question, "Looking for a unique gift?" TeeHee.
Amateur hour...