Sometimes a treasure lies right under our noses. Andrea Lo Rosso seems to have had this chance. This sixty-year-old Italian living in Pompeii has just discovered thata painting, which remained hung for half a century in a cheap frame on a wall in his family’s living room, would an authentic Picasso estimated 6 million euros. His second-hand dealer father, Luigi Lo Rosso, he said, found this rolled up canvas while emptying the cellar of a house in Capri in 1962…
A distorted face, as if cut in two; one ear above the eye; two large red lines for a mouth; a nose reduced to a tube… “My father had no no idea who Picasso was. My mother didn’t want to keep him, she kept saying that he was horrible”says Andrea in the columns of Guardian. So much so that the family even considered throwing it in the trash…
A portrait of Dora Maar ?
Patient André, Dora Maararound 1937
i
It was a good thing for them to change their minds, because it would seem that this broken face, painted in a few black lines, is none other than a cubist portrait by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) by photographer Dora Maar (1907–1997), muse and companion (from 1936 to 1943) of the Catalan painter.
Growing up, Andrea asked herself questions on this painting signed “Picasso”installed in the room before his birth. Using a book given to him by his aunt, the young man the signature appears to that which is found on famous paintings by the master and notes their great resemblance. But his father, not very knowledgeable about art, would have turned a deaf ear…
An authenticated signature
After Luigi’s death, Andrea calls on experts. This is how, after several months of careful comparison work, the graphologue Cinzia Altierimember of the scientific committee of the Arcadia foundation, authenticates the signature and evaluates the table 6 million euros.
Luca Marcante, president of the Arcadia Foundation, also states with certainty thatthis is an original. However, the painting has yet to be authenticated by the Picasso Foundation in Malaga, which has not yet responded to Andrea’s requests. The work was safe in a safe in Milanwhile waiting for the verdict that could change the life of its owner!
