In the course of the arrest of the Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro, the Italian investigators unearth something new every day, and some harbor the faint hope that with a bit of luck there will also be a clue to the whereabouts of the Caravaggio painting "Birth of Christ with the Saints Lawrence and Francis” that disappeared from the Church of San Lorenzo in Palermo in 1968.

The image is listed among the FBI's Top Ten Art Crimes.

Allegedly, the Sicilian mafia is behind the robbery.

If that's actually true, Denaro should know something about it.

So far, however, only one other painting has appeared, the fate of which has also been puzzled.

Eyeglass lenses like German flags

Karen Krueger

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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It was created by the Italian artist Flavia Mantovan and shows Matteo Messina Denaro as a young mafioso in a casual pose with a royal crown and sunglasses, whose black, red and yellow lenses are intended to represent the reflection of firelight - the light of the fire, that of the mafia boss, symbolically thought, with his murders in Italy's company (one is startled at first because the glasses look like two German flags).

The image is part of a 2005 series of portraits that Mantovan painted from photographs.

In 2009, the paintings were exhibited in the Faces of the Mafia show at the then newly opened Salemi Mafia Museum, 24 kilometers from Denaro's hometown.

They caused quite a stir, as many felt that the mafia bosses' museumisation was an intolerable provocation.

The pictures later went to a gallery owner in Rome, and at some point the artist received word that the Denaro portrait had found a buyer who was immediately willing to pay a considerable sum for it.

The late gallery owner kept the name of the mysterious buyer to himself.

In 2011 the portrait was supposed to be shown in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, but the owner could not be determined.

A few days ago, the carabinieri came across him and the picture.

The portrait of the mafia boss hung the whole time in the living room of an elderly lady - with Matteo Denaro's mom.