Mysterious Picasso Found In Italian Cellar

At Large October 9, 2024 Carlota Gamboa

Wikimedia Commons, José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

'Family Portrait' (1964) by Pablo Picasso - Museo Soumaya - Mexico. License

After years of hanging unsuspectingly in an Italian family home, a portrait that has now been attributed to Pablo Picasso is on the verge of official authentication. The titleless work, thought to be of Picasso’s long-time muse and mistress Dora Maar, was found in 1962 by a man named Luigi Lo Rosso, while cleaning out a cellar in Capri.

When the rolled-up canvas was brought home with Lo Rosso, he had no clue who Picasso was, and frankly, was not interested in finding the author of the piece. Making his living as a junk dealer, Lo Rosso didn’t think it was much more than a quirky painting and hung it up in his living room where it stayed for decades, apparently to his wife’s displeasure.

Wikimedia Commons, Pablo Picasso

Portrait of Dora Maar (1937), by Pablo Picasso. License

It wouldn’t be until Luigi’s son, Andrea, stumbled upon some of Picasso’s work in an art history book that the family thought anything significant of it.

Andrea Lo Rosso, now 60, states there were moments when the family almost got rid of the painting, since his mother kept saying it was “horrible,” but no one ever followed through with its removal. Over the years, Andrea attempted to get in contact with the Picasso Foundation in Málaga several times, but wasn’t taken seriously by the institution.

Though the foundation has final say on whether or not the painting will be considered part of Picasso’s oeuvre, which holds more than 14,000 pieces, third party experts have determined that the painting likely belongs to the Spaniard’s body of work.

In hopes of finding out the painting’s origins, the Lo Rosso family contacted a group of experts to assist with the authentication, including art detective Maurizio Seracini and Cinzia Altieri, a graphologist and member of the Arcadia Foundation— a scientific committee specializing in the valuation and restoration of artworks.

Picasso; Courtesy of Andrea Lo Rosso

Newly found Picasso painting owned by the Lo Rosso family in Capri, Italy

Altieri states, as per The Guardian, “After all the other examinations of the painting were done, I was given the job of studying the signature. I worked on it for months, comparing it with some of his original works. There is no doubt that the signature is his. There was no evidence suggesting that it was false.”

The Arcadia Foundation’s president, Luca Marcante, will now be responsible for presenting their findings to the Picasso Foundation. If the portrait is, in fact, accepted and authenticated, the estimated value stands at approximately €6 million ($6.6) for the portrait. However, only time can tell the ultimate fate of the piece, thought to have been finished between 1930 and 1936.

Hopefully, the final result of the painting’s future, as well as that of the Lo Rosso family, will resemble the recent story of a 500-year old engraving by Albrecht Dürer. Found by Mat Winter in the backseat of a car at a “rubbish dump” when he was 11, the signed and dated 1513 print— entitled Knight, Death and the Devil— made $44,800 (£33,390) a couple weeks ago at auction, almost twice its high estimate.

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