In the autumn of 1969, after an evening of heavy storms and thunder, a caretaker got here dashing out of a baroque church within the previous metropolis of Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily. In tears, the girl had simply found {that a} priceless Caravaggio portray that hung over the altar had been lower from its body and stolen.
More 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 best unsolved mysteries. Long believed to have been taken by the Italian mafia, the portray, estimated to be value no less than $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 could have their finest probability in a long time to get well 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 resolve 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.
But 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 advised him they may put in a superb 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 recover something, they would speak to the prosecutors,” Veres advised 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 Missing Masterpiece. Together, 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.
During his profession, Veres has handled middlemen linked to the mafia no less than as soon as earlier than. The Sicilian mob has lengthy performed an necessary function within the illicit artwork commerce. Now Veres is pulling on these connections to find the Caravaggio.
“At some stage, somebody within the mafia will be making a decision on whether…to give it back, or how to give it back, under what terms to give it back,” Veres stated.
Over the previous half century, the Caravaggio portray has change into an emblem of the mafia’s enduring energy. In 1989, a mafia turncoat admitted to stealing the portray. But since then, Italian police have made scant progress to find solutions. In 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 stated had tried to promote the portray within the Seventies. Around the identical time, this mafioso was a bodyguard for an up-and-coming actual property developer in Milan named Silvio Berlusconi.