Capri Canvas: Italian Family Hopes to Prove Discarded Painting is Picasso
An Italian family is on the verge of a historic discovery, potentially possessing a long-lost Picasso painting that was discarded from a villa on the island of Capri over 60 years ago. The Lo Russo family is confident that their rolled-up canvas, featuring a female figure, is the work of the renowned artist, and they have been gathering scientific data to persuade the Picasso estate administration in Paris to authenticate the piece, The Associated Press reports.
The painting’s journey began in the early 1960s when it was found in a pile of trash destined for disposal. It hung unnoticed in the family’s living room and later in their restaurant in Pompei until the son, Antonio Lo Russo, decided to investigate its origins.
Lo Russo’s curiosity was sparked after seeing a Picasso in a school textbook, but his early attempts to verify the painting’s authenticity met with skepticism. His journey led him to Paris where he showed the canvas to experts at the Picasso Museum, but it took decades of persistence to finally gather compelling evidence.
A recent battery of tests conducted by the Arcadia Foundation in Switzerland has produced promising results. The tests revealed the paints used were consistent with Picasso’s palette during a specific period, and a handwriting expert authenticated the signature on the painting as Picasso’s.
Luca Marcante, founder of the Arcadia Foundation, believes the painting is strikingly similar to a 1949 Picasso work titled “Tete du femme,” included in the online Picasso Project curated by Sam Houston State University. Marcante claims photographic evidence proves Picasso visited the Pompeii ruins in 1917, and likely visited nearby Capri, where he may have painted the Lo Russo canvas sometime in the early 1940s.
However, Enrique Mallen, the Picasso scholar who runs the online database, casts doubt on the theory that Picasso would have created two paintings so similar, especially since “Tete du femme” appears to depict his lover Dora Maar. He emphasizes that his database, which contains over 41,000 entries, does not authenticate artworks – only the Picasso Administration in Paris has that authority.
Marcante values the painting at €6 million ($6.6 million) and believes its value would skyrocket to €10-12 million if authenticated. The Lo Russo family is now caught in a whirlwind of inquiries as they wait for a response from the Picasso Administration, unsure if they would sell the painting if its authenticity is confirmed.
