The FBI has been looking for this painting of the seventeenth century for more than 50 years

While banks could be considered the place par excellence for robberies, few take into account another of the large markets: that of the works of art.

And it is that the paintings are part of a historical heritage, especially those of the great artists of past centuries, such as Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh and Da Vinciamong others.

Within this select group is also the Italian Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggiowho in his last days painted “The Nativity”by San Francisco and San Lorenzo surrounded by the Sagrada Familia, commissioned for the Franciscan Oratory of San Lorenzoin Palermo, capital of Sicily.

In this piece, Caravaggio made use of the anachronistic resource and presented Dos Santos in the same scene. He Oil on canvas It shows a group of characters surrounding a mother and a child, in a situation that transmits sadness. However, despite the mother’s sorry face, you can see an angel that descends and carries a filacteria that announces “glory to God in the heights”while the other hand points to heaven, indicating the divine origin of the child.

How was the theft of Caravaggio’s Nativity

The painting remained all the time in the same place, until on the rainy night of the October 17, 1969a group of inexperienced thieves In the matter they took it. For the evidence seen at the scene, those responsible They would have removed the work with a razor, and with the weight they would have fallen.

This careless plan, however, was successful, since they took Caravaggio, although they did not know their true value, which did see it Gaetano Badalamentiat that time “Capo Dei Capi” of the Nostra thingthe Sicilian mafia. The leader moved some chips and for the beginning of 1970 I already had the painting.

FBI search

Despite the tireless search by the FBI“The Nativity” It is still missing. Anyway, thanks to the testimony of Gaetano Gradeformer member of the mafia, it was known that Badalamenti was behind his whereabouts.

But the versions of its current state are a more hopeless than the other; On the one hand, the most popular suggests that The picture was cut into several parts and sent to Switzerland in a expensive salewhile in others it is considered that He was forgotten in a stable or who was eaten by mice.

Likewise, it was known that the members of the Nostra thing had used it as a sign of power, and that in an attempt to sell it, a Swiss intermediary started crying when seeing the state of Caravaggio’s work.

In honor of the lost piece, the Franciscan oratory of San Lorenzo hung a digital work made in Madrid, based on a collection of different photographs. The substitute, which has been there since 2015, seeks to do justice to the original, of which one thing is known: If you find it, it will never be as before.