Timeline Of Events In The Missing Caravaggio Nativity


CARAVAGGIO
Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence
1609
Oil on canvas, 268 x 197 cm

Timeline of events in the Caravaggio Nativity complied from the following sources:

ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes against Art)
Breaking News on the Stolen Caravaggio Nativity Friday, December 18, 2009

From Times Online: Lost Caravaggio painting 'was burnt by Mafia' by Richard Owen

From The New York Times: Mafia and a Lost Caravaggio Stun Andreotti Trial By CELESTINE BOHLEN Published: November 8, 1996

1969 October 16 The Caravaggio Nativity was stolen from the Main Altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo, Palermo, Italy

1980’s Caravaggio Nativity had been hidden in a Pullara family barn where it was “ruined, eaten by rats and hogs, and therefore burned.” Gaspare Spatuzza

Late 1980’s Investigative reporter Peter Watson then said he received an offer for the painting from an individual at Laviano, near Salerno, but that the earthquake in the Irpinia interrupted the contact and that he presumed the painting was destroyed.

1992 the supposedly pentito Mafia killer Giovanni Brusco told a judge that he had personally tried to negotiate with the Italian State over the return of the Caravaggio Nativity in a swap for more lenient conditions for convicted mafiosi.

1996 Francesco Marino Mannoia, a convicted heroin dealer, testifying at the trial of Giulio Andreotti, the former prime minister, on charges of links to the Mafia, claimed there had been a private buyer who wept at the sight of the damaged painting.

1999 According to Gaspare Spatuzza when both he and Palermo Mafia boss Filippo Graviano were in prison in 1999, Graviano told Spatuzza that in the 1980’s the Caravaggio Nativity had been hidden in a Pullara family barn where it was “ruined, eaten by rats and hogs, and therefore burned.”

2001 According to General Roberto Conforti, who at that time still headed the crack Carabinieri art squad he had founded, “We were searching a farm near Palermo after we were given a ‘tip’ that the work was hidden under a cement cover—but then nothing,” he told Paolo Conti of Corriere della Sera in an interview published on August 24 2004.

2005 the Australian reporter Peter Robb alleged that Mannoia had made a mistake, and that the canvas Mannois was referring to was not the Caravaggio at all

2009 December 4 Spatuzza told a court in Turin that Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, had links to the Mafia dating at least to the early 1990s, and had struck a deal with Cosa Nostra bosses which they boasted had "put the country in our hands". He claimed Mr Berlusconi and Mr Dell'Utri had links to Cosa Nostra during a Mafia bombing campaign in Rome, Milan and Florence in 1993.

Does anybody else notice that the standard view of the history of the stolen painting has a gap from the time it was taken in 1969 until 1980? Why no dates given of the painting's whereabouts in the 1970’s? Who was in possession of the painting during this time? If the motive for the theft of the painting has never been made clear then one could speculate that the Mafia stole the painting for someone willing to pay for the painting. Did this person paid for the painting in 1969? Sure bet. Why steal a painting if you have no buyer? Is the motive for the theft just because the Mafia loved Caravaggio and wanted to hang it up during their meetings? Or was the painting stolen to help raise funds for a construction project? Everyone knows that Mr Berlusconi made his fortune in property development starting in 1969. Well since any information on the motive for stealing the Caravaggio will now be made a state secret according to the Italian courts we may never know. Actually maybe its just poor jouralism that is unable to uncover the whereabouts of the painting from 1969 to 1980’s?

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