ROME (AP) – Italian police recovered a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century painting “Salvator Mundi” by Jesus Christ, which was stolen from a church in Naples during the pandemic, without the priests even realizing it that she was gone.
The discovery was made when the Naples police, working on a larger operation, found the painting hidden in an apartment. Police chief Alfredo Fabbrocini said the owner of the apartment was arrested after offering an “unreliable” explanation that he had bought it “casually” at a market.
The painting is a copy of Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World), which sold a record $ 450 million at a Christie’s auction in 2017. The unidentified bidder was later identified as a Saudi real who allegedly bought it at name of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It was supposed to be presented a year later at the museum, but the exhibition was postponed indefinitely and the work has not been seen by the public since.
The copy, attributed to Leonardo’s school, but not to the Renaissance artist himself, was housed in a small museum in a side chapel of the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, which had been closed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Fabbrocini said the discovery was particularly satisfactory “because we solved a case before it was created”. He explained: “The painting was found, but its caretaker did not notice that it was stolen.”
The painting depicts a Jesus dressed in a robe holding a crystal sphere and looking directly at the viewer. The basilica of San Domenico says the painting was probably made by a Leonardo student in the 1520s and purchased by Giovan Antonio Muscettola, advisor to Emperor Charles V and ambassador to the papal court. He was housed in the Muscettola family chapel in the basilica.
It was restored before being shown at a 1983-1984 exhibition “Leonardo and Leonardismo in Naples and Rome”.