A painting stolen 20 years ago and accidentally found five weeks ago in Piacenza, in northwest Italy, is indeed an original by Gustav Klimt, said a magistrate in charge of the investigation on Friday. "It is with great emotion that I can tell you that the painting found is authentic," said Ornella Chicca at a press conference.
In February 1997, when the Piacenza museum La Galerie Ricci Oddi was closed for work, the painting titled Portrait of a Lady was stolen without leaving traces.
The painting found in a trash bag
On December 10, 2019, gardeners who cleaned the museum's external wall came across it. By tearing off ivy, they dropped a small ventilation door, and discovered a black garbage bag containing the painting on its frame but without frame. The director of the museum, Massimo Ferrari, had indicated from the first days after the discovery to AFP to have "positive signals" concerning the authenticity of the work.
For a first authentication, "more than anything else, we looked at the back of the painting because it is behind that appear the wax seals and plaster where is affixed the stamp of the museum", had then explained Mr. Ferrari, stressing that the back of a painting is "much more difficult to reconstruct (than the front), even for counterfeiters".
A portrait under the portrait
The Portrait of a Lady , a 55x65 cm painting, produced in 1916/1917 by Gustav Klimt, was widely publicized in 1996 when an art history student, Claudia Maga, contributed to discover that under a first portrait was hidden another.
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