A painting found by an antiques dealer while cleaning out the cellar of a house in Capri is an original portrait of Pablo Picasso, Italian experts say.
When Luigi Lo Rosso found the painting in 1962, he took the rolled canvas back to his home in Pompeii, placed it in an inexpensive frame, and hung it on his living room wall for decades to come.
The portrait, now believed by its owners to be a distorted image of Dora Maar, a French photographer and painter who was Picasso’s mistress and muse, bears the famous artist’s distinctive signature in the upper left corner. But Lo Rosso did not know who created the work, and his wife often dismissed the portrait as “creepy,” according to the Guardian.
When Andrea’s son started asking questions after studying an art history encyclopedia his aunt had given him, suspicions were raised.
The family eventually sought the advice of a panel of experts, including a well-known art researcher, Maurizio Ceracini. After years of complex research, Cincia Altieri, graphologist and member of the scientific committee of the Arcadia Foundation, which deals with the valuations, restorations and attributions of works of art, confirmed that the signature on the painting, currently worth 6 million euros, is Picasso’s.
“After all the other checks on the painting were done, I was assigned to study the signature,” Altieri told the Guardian. “I worked for months, comparing it to some signatures from his original works. There is no doubt that the signature is his. There was no evidence to suggest it was fake.”
Picasso frequently visited the Italian island of Capri and the painting, which bears a striking resemblance to Picasso’s Buste de femme (Dora Maar), is believed to have been created between 1930 and 1936.
Luigi Lo Rosso has died, but his son Andrea, 60, has continued the quest to discover the artist behind the painting.
“My father was from Capri and he collected old things to sell for a very small price,” he said. “He found the painting before I was born and had no idea who Picasso was. He was not a very cultivated man. While reading about Picasso’s works in the encyclopedia, I looked at the painting and compared his signature. I used to tell my father it was similar, but he didn’t understand. But as I grew up, I kept wondering,” he said.
He explained that he contacted the Picasso Foundation in Malaga several times, but there was no interest in looking into some of his claims, believing them to be false. The foundation has the final say on the authenticity of the painting, now kept in a vault in Milan.
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