Has Caravaggio's Nativity ended up in Switzerland? The latest news on the work in Cuppone's book

The theft of Caravaggio ’s Nativity (Michelangelo Merisi; Milan, 1571 - Porto Ercole, 1610), the Lombard painter’s masterpiece stolen on the night of Oct. 17-18, 1969, from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, does not cease to be a topical issue, and it is one of the topics (but not the only one) of Caravaggio scholar Michele Cuppone’s new book: Entitled Caravaggio, the Palermo Nativity. Birth and Disappearance of a Masterpiece, published by Campisano Editore (160 pages, €30.00, ISBN 9788885795716) and, which came out a year ago on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the theft, is now presented again in an expanded, revised and updated edition, where there is no shortage of new features. It is a very dense essay to take stock of the situation and to retrace, critically and without leaving the field to fanciful reconstructions, one of the most convoluted and intricate events in art history in the last hundred years, with also the goal of understanding where the painting might currently be. But, as anticipated, Michele Cuppone’s essay is also about more than that: in particular, the author reconstructs the painting’s history in light of the latest scientific developments.

And it is precisely from the historical vicissitudes that the discussion begins: “if the identification of the characters is quite clear,” Cuppone begins on the first page of the book, “on the dating of the painting there is still confusion,” since in recent years there has been much discussion about a possible execution in 1600, when Caravaggio was still in Rome, instead of 1609. According to Cuppone, all the arguments in our possession argue in favor of a realization to be placed precisely in the 1600s. The first clues are biographical: while there is an abundance of accounts of Caravaggio’s presence in Messina and Syracuse, where the artist is historically attested, the same cannot be said of Palermo. Some biographers mention a passage of his in the city, but without elaborating, probably assuming Caravaggio’s presence in the current Sicilian capital on the basis of the presence of the painting: in fact, his early biographers (Giovanni Baglione, Giovan Pietro Bellori) had never been to Sicily and had no verifiable sources in the field, having them collected oral testimonies and then published them long after any stay in Palermo. Then there are stylistic-compositional elements: the Nativity has nothing to do with works of the Sicilian period such as the Resurrection of Lazarus and theAdoration of Messina or the Seppellimento di santa Lucia of Syracuse, and is instead much more similar to works executed in Rome in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (such as the Judith of Palazzo Barberini: The similarity of the Palermo Madonna to the Roman Judith is particularly striking).

Caravaggio, Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis (1600; oil on canvas, 268 x 197 cm; Palermo, formerly in the Oratory of San Lorenzo, stolen in 1969)

The hypothesis of a dating to 1600 is not new: the first to launch it, Cuppone recalls, was Enrico Mauceri, in 1925, and it would later be accepted by Edoardo Arslan and Stefano Bottari in 1951, on the occasion of the first major exhibition on Caravaggio in Milan. And it was precisely on the occasion of that exhibition that the work was subjected to some X-rays, which then highlighted a technique similar to that which Caravaggio adopted for the canvases in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, also from the early seventeenth century (1600-1605). This brings us to 1971, the date of Gian Lodovico Masetti Zannini’s publication of a notarial document dated April 5, 1600, of which Cuppone offers a useful translation in this second edition. Signed in the house of the merchant Alessandro Albani, with it Caravaggio committed himself to another merchant, Fabio Nuti, to paint a painting cum figuris, which in 1982 Alfred Moir attempted to identify with the Nativity in Palermo (since the dimensions of the painting are almost superimposable with those indicated in the deed found by Masetti Zannini), a hypothesis accepted by Maurizio Calvesi in 2011. What was missing, however, was a connection between Nuti and Palermo, which was discovered only recently, thanks to some archival findings by Giovanni Mendola and Francesca Curti: a financial transaction having as beneficiary a confrate of the Oratory of San Lorenzo, and some contacts between Albani and the Palermo scholar Mariano Valguarnera, who was present in Rome in the spring of 1600, and above all linked to the Oratory of San Lorenzo by bonds of friendship and business. In addition, it was discovered that, in the summer of 1600, there was an intervention in the Oratory on the cornice of the high altar, which, Cuppone points out, “as it seems was preparing to house the altarpiece close to the Laurentian feast day,” August 10.

The context, in short, seems clear: “it is hard now to believe,” Cuppone concludes, "that that Fabio Nuti who, as inferred, required a sacred altarpiece, with measurements congruent with the Palermo painting, and who had, in the same months, relations with distant Palermo, gravitating around the same place of destination of the painting, was extraneous to the commission of the Nativity.“ Ultimately, ”thanks to interdisciplinary research, without much more uncertainty we can return [...] the Nativity to the Roman period." And, one might add, a more linear stylistic path is thus also restored to Caravaggio, without the incongruous leap of the Nativity if placed in the Sicilian period. Obviously, the explicit evidence that would guarantee absolute certainty is lacking, but the painting nonetheless argues in favor of a dating to the 1600s, moreover recently widely accepted by much of Caravaggio’s critics. The next chapter of Cuppone’s book also focuses, in the opening lines, on possible objections, prompting the author to question whether Caravaggio was ever in Palermo (the answer is that the painter was probably never in the city, or one of his stays was not significant). But there are other enigmas to be solved, above all the traditional identification of the saints, which is far from obvious (for example, the “Saint Francis” who so far appeared without stigmata, an element that had raised more than one doubt).

The book’s cover

In any case, Cuppone acknowledges, “the biggest and most serious question that remains concerns the painting’s disappearance and what might have been its fate.” A chapter on theNativity ’s fortunes among copies, reproductions, films and exhibitions (e.g., Paolo Geraci’s antique copy or Philippe Benoist’s 19th-century lithograph) leads to the section in which the dilemma of the theft is addressed, about which, Cuppone points out, “it is not an exaggeration to say that everything has been said and written,” due to the fact that many of the hypotheses, even the most fascinating ones, appear to be completely inconsistent. For example, the idea that the Mafia used the Nativity in an alleged negotiation with the state to negotiate a softening of the harsh regime for Mafiosi, the 41 bis: in fact, in the depositions of Giovanni Brusca (the Mafioso, later a turncoat, to whom the attempted plea bargain is attributed) there is no reference to the painting. Another story to be discarded would be the one put into circulation by the late scholar Maurizio Marini, who told of having seen the canvas in a barn in Palermo, where it was allegedly taken by some fences, and that the deal then fell through (a story, says Cuppone, “that has all the flavor of a braggart,” since in his support Marini cited scholars who at the time of his claims, 2006, had all disappeared, and that there is no proof whatsoever of his hypotheses).

Another legend is that of the Caravaggio being used as a “trophy” in Mafia summits by the Corleonese, denied, however, by a Mafioso himself, later a collaborator with the judiciary, Francesco Marino Mannoia, according to whom such a practice was an “antics,” considered detrimental to the “seriousness” of the Mafia. The Anti-Mafia Commission then also debunked the myth of the Nativity abandoned in a pigsty and eaten by rats and pigs: this version found its origin in a testimony by the turncoat Gaspare Spatuzza, dating back to 2009, who declared that he had received the news from another Mafioso, Filippo Graviano, who in turn, however, had learned this version of the story from a third person. In reality, it has been established that these were mere deductions by Spatuzza and his informant, with no certainty that the painting that was the subject of this story was the Nativity.

What do we know then for sure? Cuppone’s book lists the latest news around the theft, some of which also emerged from new, personal archival research. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of how the events took place: “To get into the small building, which lacked an alarm system, it was enough to force the shutters, which were moreover defective, of one of the windows facing the street (once access doors before the street level was lowered in 1806). To make their work easier, the thieves overturned on the altar the many candelabra lined up in front of the painting, which along with other furnishings in the surrounding area had been turned upside down [...]. The crucifix, however, placed in front of the canvas, was respectfully placed standing on a chair [...]. The painting was then taken out of the frame along with the frame, and cut all around it without leaving anything of the original canvas.” From an interview, given to the Guardian on October 17, 2019, by Antonella Lampone, daughter of Maria Gelfo who was at the time janitor of the San Lorenzo Oratory, we learn that a rug, likely used to shelter the canvas from the rain, also disappeared. None of the neighbors noticed, or admitted to noticing, anything, nor was any hot record ever found. Loaded onto a Fiat 642, the canvas then began a series of transfers that cannot be precisely reconstructed. However, some known passages are known: for example, to the house of one of the thieves on the night of the theft, and then to a disused icebox in Brancaccio where the work was shown to a potential buyer (who immediately abandoned the negotiation realizing the impossibility of placing such an important and well-known work on the market). It was therefore, in all likelihood, a commissioned theft, and the Mafia would only come on board later, when even the thieves were clear that no one would be able to buy the Nativity. Cosa Nostra immediately tracked down one of the perpetrators of the theft (possibly Riccardo De Santis) and procured the painting, granting its holders 4-5 million liras by way of “consolation.” Mafioso Gaetano Grado, who personally interceded with the thieves, got it into the hands of notorious boss Gaetano Badalamenti.

It is not clear whether it is already at this point that the work was used in an attempt, which later fizzled out, to obtain a ransom by directly contacting Monsignor Benedetto Rocco, the priest of the oratory. The then superintendent of Palermo, Vincenzo Scuderi (who in 2019, in an interview with Swiss TV RSI, confirmed this version) was aware of these developments in 1974: Cuppone rediscovered (and publishes in full in this new edition of the volume) a letter from Scuderi from that year, which mentioned a ransom demand and recent contacts between Monsignor Rocco and the fences. According to Grado, however, the work would have been sent to Switzerland, to an elderly Swiss trafficker who bought it, as early as 1970: it remains to be seen whether the 1974 negotiation was a later attempt to sell it or a possible deception. Also from the documents found by Cuppone, we learn that art historian Rodolfo Siviero, famous for his “impossible” recoveries, had also been on the painting’s trail, and since Siviero only dealt with works that ended up abroad, the Caravaggio had probably already ended up outside the national borders. According to the latest developments, the testimony of Gaetano Grado (who at the time of the events was twenty-six years old, today he is seventy-eight) would have led to the identification of the Swiss trafficker, whose name remains at the moment covered by the investigative secrecy (it should be specified, however, that the man has been deceased for years and that Cuppone offers a clue), and at the moment it remains to reconstruct the plot of his acquaintances, to understand whether the “Swiss trail” may lead to the discovery of Caravaggio’s Nativity. However, it is recent news that investigations are being revived through international letters rogatory that would involve Switzerland more directly: perhaps hopes are not lost of seeing Michelangelo Merisi’s masterpiece again.

Michele Cuppone’s book, which is distinguished by its brisk pace and precise methodology based mainly on documentary research, as is the author’s practice, concludes with an anthology of ancient and modern art historians on the Nativity, an accurate biography of Caravaggio, and a rich press review of October 1969: the articles have all been faithfully transcribed, including the only news report, from RAI, and the collection thus constitutes a valuable source for tracing the dismay of the “day after” told in the words of those who lived through the theft. A volume that, in the unchanged cover price despite the many updates and an enriched editorial layout (more pages and plates all in color), thus represents the most up-to-date and complete summary on the affair. With the hope, Cuppone concludes, that the last chapter of the book “will soon be to be rewritten, overtaken by the news of the much hoped-for recovery.”

Has Caravaggio's Nativity ended up in Switzerland? The latest news on the work in Cuppone's book

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