Among the Lo Rossos, the painting was nicknamed “the squiggle”. For years, the work hung on the wall of the family home, without anyone suspecting that it was a Picasso.
It all began in the 1960s. As usual, Luigi Lo Rosso searched abandoned houses looking for objects to resell. One day in 1962, he came across the painting of an asymmetrical woman in the basement of a villa on the island of Capri, Italy. The second-hand dealer decides to take the painting home to Pompeii and offer it to his wife. No one suspects that they have in their hands a work worth millions. Even Picasso’s signature in the left corner of the canvas doesn’t put them on the trail.
The painting, too ugly to sell, the Lo Rossos think, hangs in the house. Life goes on and the couple starts a family. Later, in the 1980s, their young son Andrea studied the work of Pablo Picasso at school, and came across the “Dora Maar Bust of a Woman”. He learns that the Spanish painter spent time in Capri in the 1950s. Returning home, he informs his parents that the painting could be valuable and should be presented to experts.
Decades of research followed. Some art historians tell them that it is not a Picasso, but still offer to recover it. Suspicious, Luigi and his wife register it with the Italian heritage police, then lock it in a safe (…)
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