The painting as seen last week at a restoration laboratory in Milan, Italy | Credit: Antonio Calanni.
Imagine this: you’ve got a dusty old painting shoved into a corner, ignored, and left to languish in a cheap frame, only to discover it’s an original Picasso.
If you’re already wincing at the thought of it gathering cobwebs next to a forgotten box of Christmas decorations, brace yourself—this actually happened.
Yes, tucked away in the basement of an Italian villa, a painting bearing Picasso’s signature was casually hung on a family’s wall and later in a restaurant, passed over for decades like a particularly unremarkable postcard from Mallorca. Now, this once-overlooked masterpiece is set to be valued at a jaw-dropping €6 million, and the price could double or triple if the Pablo Picasso Foundation in Paris gives it the nod. Talk about hidden treasure.
Painting of Dora Maar found: Pablo Picasso’s lover and muse
The painting in question? An asymmetrical portrait of Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover and muse, who suffered both his passion and his mood swings. The piece was unearthed by Luigi Lo Rosso, a local pawnbroker and part-time treasure hunter who prowled through dumps and abandoned villas like an Indiana Jones of discarded bric-a-brac. He found this dusty relic in the basement of a villa on the island of Capri in the 1950s. How it ended up there, who can say? Perhaps a jilted lover or a distracted heir left it behind, unaware of the creative genius that once sat over a bottle of wine and painted it.
Now, here’s where the tale takes a whimsical turn. Lo Rosso believed it to be a Picasso, but his wife? Less convinced. What’s a man to do when his spouse shrugs off his prized find? Frame it and give it to her as a gift, of course! (Happy anniversary, darling, here’s a six-million-euro painting).
The poor woman, who called the painting ugly, later scrubbed it with detergent, treating it like an old rug she wanted to freshen up. If Pablo himself were alive, he might have raised an eyebrow, then shrugged in true Picasso fashion and said, “The purpose of art is to wash the dust of daily life off our souls.”
Picasso painting locked in a vault since 2019
Enter Andrea, Luigi’s son. Years later, while poring over art history textbooks at university, Andrea stumbled upon a Picasso painting of Dora Maar that looked uncannily familiar. Could it be? Rushing home, he told his mother they might be sitting on something more valuable than the family’s best spaghetti carbonara recipe.
Yet, like all meaningful quests, the road to validation was a long one. For decades, Andrea tried to get art experts to take the piece seriously. Many dismissed it, but Andrea—convinced of what he had in his hands—persevered, eventually registering it with the patrimony police in 2019, where it remained locked in a vault in Milan until recently being taken out for authentication.
Signature in the corner confirmed as Pablo Picasso’s
Finally, Cinzia Altieri—graphologist extraordinaire—comes into the picture, working tirelessly and running forensic tests to verify the signature in the corner. Just last month she came to her conclusion: genuine. 100% Picasso. A sigh of relief, surely—but Andrea isn’t about to celebrate just yet. He wants the ultimate stamp of approval from the Picasso Foundation in Paris, the golden ticket for any Picasso aficionado.
“I’m happy, but let’s wait to toast,” said Andrea. “There is still one step to take before we consider this incredible story over.”
If the Picasso Foundation do give their blessing, this little basement find will go from unloved gift to global masterpiece, and Luigi Lo Rosso, the thoughtful husband with an eye for abandoned gems, will have his moment of posthumous vindication.
It’s a tale that teaches us all one thing: never underestimate the value of the overlooked and forgotten treasures in the basement of your life.
