Caravaggio's lost nativity

In 2007 I traveled to Italy with the intention of seeing some of Caravaggio's works. I saw many but The Penitent Magdalen and The Rest During the Flight into Egypt at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome blew me away. Those of guys wrestling not so much. I regret that I am unlikely to ever see the nativity painting below which was stolen in 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily.


Jonathan Jones on Caravaggio's lost nativity

The evidence strongly suggests both that the painting's theft is a Mafia crime - and that it is no more likely to come back to the Oratory in a recognisable condition than that Palermo's streets will fill with the resurrected victims of assassinations and murders, bullet holes vanishing, bombed bodies whole again, strangled throats unmarked.

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