By Nick Squires
Rome: Nearly 50 years after it vanished, Italy has opened a fresh investigation into the theft of a Caravaggio that would today be worth £15 million ($23 million).
A mafia turncoat has come forward with information that could lead to the recovery of the painting, entitled Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco, which depicts Mary gazing lovingly at the newborn baby Jesus.
Caravaggio's Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco was stolen in 1969. Credit: File
It hung in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily, until it was expertly cut from its frame on a stormy night in October 1969 by unidentified thieves using razor blades or box-cutters. The theft is listed by the FBI as number two on its list of the world's top 10 art crimes.
For years, it was thought that the Nativity might have been destroyed - possibly eaten by rats and mice after being stashed in a barn in the Sicilian countryside. Another theory claimed the altarpiece was used as a bedside mat by Salvatore "Toto" Riina, the murderous head of Cosa Nostra, who died last year aged 87.
The National Anti-Mafia Commission says it has gleaned new information from the "pentito", or turncoat, that suggests that the painting was stolen, possibly with the help of art experts, and ended up in the hands of Stefano Bontade and Gaetano Badalamenti, two Cosa Nostra bosses.
They then smuggled the painting to Switzerland, according to Gaetano Grado, the turncoat. A Swiss art dealer, who has since died, cut the oil painting into pieces to make it easier to sell on the black market on behalf of the mafia.
Badalamenti was arrested in 1984 for trafficking millions of dollars' worth of heroin into the US, in what was known as the "pizza connection". He spent 17 years in prison before dying in a hospital in Massachusetts in 2004.
The Anti-Mafia Commission has passed on the information to prosecutors in Sicily, who have opened a fresh investigation.
Rosy Bindi, the head of the commission, said that investigators had unearthed "interesting elements" that could lead to the work being traced.
"We don't believe the painting was destroyed, as was thought in the past," she said.
As part of the inquiry, prosecutors are expected to interview a range of people, including a former mafia member convicted of drug offences who has since been released from prison.
"The mafia made a lot of money out of it. We hope to be able to find at least a fragment. Our investigation has found sufficient leads to justify the reopening of a judicial investigation," Bindi said.
Caravaggio is believed to have painted the Nativity in 1609, just a year before his death in Porto Ercole in Tuscany. He fled Rome after murdering a man in a fight over a gambling debt at a tennis match. He spent the rest of his days on the run, spending time in Naples and Malta before arriving in Sicily.
The artist, whose full name was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, went on to produce many of his best-known masterpieces on the island. He was just 38 when he died.
Telegraph, London