Within the fall of 1969, after an evening of heavy storms and thunder, a caretaker got here dashing out of a baroque church within the outdated metropolis of Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily. In tears, the lady had simply found {that a} priceless Caravaggio portray that hung over the altar had been minimize from its body and stolen.
Greater than half a century later, the destiny of Caravaggio’s Nativity With St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painted in 1609, stays one of many artwork world’s biggest unsolved mysteries. Lengthy believed to have been taken by the Italian mafia, the portray, estimated to be value a minimum of $20 million, is listed by the FBI among the many world’s high 10 artwork crimes.
Now, greater than 50 years after the disappearance of the grasp work, authorities might have their greatest probability in many years to get better the Caravaggio. And in a dramatic twist, it’s coming within the type of a shadowy determine whose personal freedom is at stake. A 69-year-old Anglo-Hungarian artwork supplier named William Veres wants to unravel one of many coldest chilly circumstances in artwork crime historical past or face jail himself. Veres was arrested at his residence in London in 2018, {accused} by prosecutors in Sicily of working a pan-European smuggling ring made up of tomb raiders, counterfeiters, fences, and frontmen—a few of whom are suspected of getting connections with the Sicilian mob.
However Veres, an professional on historical cash identified to these within the commerce as “The Professor,” says he met with Italy’s anti-mafia police, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA), who informed him they are going to put in phrase with prosecutors if he can discover the Caravaggio portray. And maybe, if discovered responsible, he says he might be spared some 20 years in jail. (The DIA didn’t return a request for remark.)
“If I managed to get better one thing, they’d communicate to the prosecutors,” Veres informed me.
Over the previous three years, I’ve adopted Veres on this unlikely quest, which is the topic of my new podcast, The Professor: The Hunt for the Mafia’s Lacking Masterpiece. Collectively, we traveled throughout Europe, assembly with former mafia hit males and turncoats, retired cops, and shadowy artwork world figures. As we adopted clues to the portray’s whereabouts, we went additional than Italy’s police have ever gone.
Throughout his profession, Veres has handled middlemen linked to the mafia a minimum of as soon as earlier than. The Sicilian mob has lengthy performed an essential position within the illicit artwork commerce. Now Veres is pulling on these connections to find the Caravaggio.
“At some stage, any individual throughout the mafia will likely be making a choice on whether or not…to present it again, or methods to give it again, beneath what phrases to present it again,” Veres mentioned.
Over the previous half century, the Caravaggio portray has grow to be a logo of the mafia’s enduring energy. In 1989, a mafia turncoat admitted to stealing the portray. However since then, Italian police have made scant progress to find solutions. Within the podcast, we reveal for the primary time how an Italian police investigation into the portray was thwarted within the Nineties. Earlier this 12 months in a park in Naples, I spoke to Ferdinando Musella, the cop who led that probe.
In 1997, Musella’s investigation led him to interview a former mafioso whom witnesses mentioned had tried to promote the portray within the Seventies. Across the identical time, this mafioso was a bodyguard for an up-and-coming actual property developer in Milan named Silvio Berlusconi.
