[CPProt.net] Will we ever see it again? (Cravaggio painting missing from Palermo church since 1969

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 Will we ever see it again?
(Filed: 05/02/2005)

Writer Peter Robb tells the murky story of a stolen nativity

In the fitful last phase of his life, from fleeing Rome in 1606 to vanishing
forever in 1610, Caravaggio spent a year in Sicily. He landed in Siracusa in
September 1608, after escaping from prison on Malta, moved abruptly to
Messina some months later, then on to Palermo. No less suddenly, he caught
one of the summer's last galleys back to Naples in 1609. He was attacked on
arrival and left for dead.
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, 1610
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, 1610

Caravaggio was a hunted man after Malta, long remembered in Sicily for
sleeping with his sword under the bed and for his explosions of violent
rage. He confided – or proclaimed – that "all my sins are mortal". But he
never stopped painting. And the four big canvases he did in Sicily are as
great as anything among his surviving work.

At least, there used to be four. Until a rainy autumn night 35 years ago,
there was a stunning Nativity by Caravaggio hanging in a Palermo church.
Some time between October 17 and 18 1969, it was cut with razor blades from
its frame over the altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo and was never seen
again.

In the capital of Cosa Nostra, people knew what to think about this, or
thought they did, but nobody talked. The silence lasted until November 1996,
27 years after the theft, when the former Mafia heroin refiner Francesco
Marino Mannoia was giving evidence in the trial of Giulio Andreotti, the
former prime minister who was accused of association with the Mafia.
Andreotti was acquitted late last year.

Mannoia mentioned, quite parenthetically, that as a young man he had been
one of those who stole the Caravaggio Nativity. It was, he said, a theft on
commission, carried out so clumsily that the painting on the huge and
crudely folded canvas – more than five square metres – was irreparably
damaged. The person it was stolen for had burst into tears when he saw the
ruined work and refused to take it.

A lot of other people felt like crying when they heard this. Earlier
intimations from an undercover agent and a British journalist had suggested
that the painting was intact, at least until the 1980s. Forget about it,
Mannoia said he had told the murdered anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni
Falcone.

This was the first account of the Caravaggio theft from inside Cosa Nostra
and it seemed to end the story.

Three years after this, I was in Rome at the headquarters of the
carabinieri's Art Work Protection Unit. I was looking into several matters
and not getting much satisfaction.

A young officer with gleaming eyes and enormous carabinieri moustaches
noticed my discontent. He drew me into his office and closed the door. He
had overheard me mention Caravaggio and wanted to talk about the stolen
Nativity.

"We know where it is," he said. "We're close to getting it back."

No recording, no note-taking allowed. What about Marino Mannoia? I asked.
Mannoia was a serious and credible witness. Why would he lie about its
destruction?

"He didn't lie. He just remembered wrongly. Another painting was stolen in
Palermo around the same time. That's the one he took, the one that was
ruined."

The young officer got excited and a colleague looked in to see why he was
shouting. The Nativity was about to be recovered - I would see, the
carabiniere said, and then I could tell the story.

The painting never was recovered, but a couple of years later the details of
what the young officer had told me started filtering out. It was not, it
turned out, a Cosa Nostra crime at all. The Nativity was stolen that wet
Palermo night by local amateurs equipped with a blade and a three-wheeled
delivery van. They had seen the painting on TV a few weeks before, in a
programme on Italy's hidden treasures. They were amazed at its value and
knew it was guarded only by an elderly janitor.

One of the thieves had a guest when they brought the canvas home. The
visitor was on the run from the police and his brother was a mafioso. It was
he who interceded the next day to save the fools who were now in bad trouble
for operating on Mafia turf without Cosa Nostra's knowledge or consent, and
to deliver the unexpected prize to Cosa Nostra. Years later, the visitor
remembered that the painting was damaged in a lower corner - torn when
caught in the door of a lift - and he recalled how they had all walked over
the canvas when it was unrolled on the floor of the room he slept in. The
Nativity passed from one Palermo boss to another to a third, Gerlando "The
Rug" Alberti, commander of the Porta Nuova district in Palermo.

Alberti ran a heroin refinery outside Palermo, and for the next 12 years,
until his arrest in 1981, he also tried to sell the Caravaggio Nativity. The
unsaleable prize became a burden. He tried and failed to sell it in
Switzerland, Italy and the US. Then Alberti was convicted of killing the
owner of a seaside bathing establishment and sentenced to life in prison.

Earlier, he had buried an iron chest containing – apparently – five kilos of
heroin, several million dollars in cash, and the Nativity rolled in a
carpet. His nephew, Vincenzo La Piana, who dug the trench the chest was
buried in, was arrested some years later and collaborated with the
prosecutors. He took them to the place where the chest had been buried,
warning them first that it was "unlikely my uncle would have left it there".
The Rug hadn't.

The Rug's arrest had coincided with the beginning of the extermination phase
of the Corleone Mafia's bid for control of Cosa Nostra. This lasted for most
of the 1980s and Gerlando Alberti was a lucky one. The Nativity's previous
owner, the Palermo boss Rosario Riccobono, was throttled in 1982 at a
barbecue lunch organised for that purpose by the Corleonesi. The physical
elimination of Palermo's old Mafia families has blocked the Nativity's
recovery. The dead can't speak, the survivors, in jail or on witness
protection, are no longer on top of things. The Rug knows, but as one of the
losers, he has reason for silence.

The years pass and the number of people alive who have seen the painting
diminishes. When Caravaggio's Nativity is recovered – and it will be –
something may have survived. So what, from photographs, are we still
missing?

Caravaggio's last big complex painting is a thrilling and scary revisitation
of the central Christian myth. An exhausted and blankly post-partum Mary
clutches her belly and stares at the thing on the ground just issued from
her. A gymnastic boy angel plunges overhead. The scene is usurped by a lithe
and wiry youth in silver hose and a green jacket, with spiky blond hair.
With his back to the viewer, his foot touching the Christ child, he twists
to face the aged Joseph with a vigorous gesture of disbelief.

The Palermo Nativity retains, uniquely among the late tragedies, a final
trace of the younger Caravaggio's insolent sense of fun.

# Peter Robb is the author of 'Midnight in Sicily' (Panther, £7.99), and
'M', a book about Caravaggio (Bloomsbury, £7.99). His most recent book is 'A
Death in Brazil' (Bloomsbury, £16.99).

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