Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence

On an October night in 1969, thieves cut a Caravaggio from its frame above an altar in Palermo and rolled it in a carpet. The newborn Christ, Mary and the saints around them have not been seen since.

The story behind the painting

Caravaggio painted this Nativity in 1609, a year before his death, during his time in Sicily. Wikipedia says it was completed in Syracuse and later moved to Palermo, while also noting it was believed to have been painted in Sicily. It hung in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. On the night of 17 to 18 October 1969, two thieves stole it, cutting the canvas from its frame and taking a carpet from the oratory, which authorities believe was used to roll it up. One theory says amateurs had learned of its value from a television programme aired a few weeks before.

What to look for

The canvas is about 2.7 metres high and two metres wide. It shows the birth of Jesus, with Mary and the newborn child at the centre and Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Lawrence among the figures gathered around them. Since the original is missing, what we can look at today is the record it left behind: photographs, slides and black-and-white glass plate negatives from its last restoration in 1951. These are the images from which the modern replica now hanging above the altar was made.

Meaning and intent

The theft is considered one of the most significant art crimes in history, and in 2005 the FBI listed it among its Top Ten Art Crimes. Investigators generally agree that the Sicilian Mafia controlled its later movements, but every account contradicts another. An informant claimed it was destroyed by rats and pigs in a barn and burnt in the 1980s; another said it was sold to a Swiss dealer and cut into pieces; others place it with collectors abroad, or lost in the 1980 Irpinia earthquake. Some authorities doubt these stories, and in 2005 Italian investigators believed it was still hidden in Sicily.

Legacy

For decades an enlarged photograph hung where the painting had been. In 2015 the broadcaster Sky commissioned a replica from Factum Arte, which studied old photographs, the 1951 negatives and other Caravaggios to recreate his style. The replica was hung above the altar on 12 December 2015, and Sky made a documentary about the original and its copy. At midnight on Christmas Eve 2022, the artist Vanessa Beecroft unveiled her personal interpretation of the Nativity in the same oratory. The original is still missing, a hole in Caravaggio's late work that the world keeps hoping to fill.