Italian Family's 'Forgotten' Picasso Painting Found In Basement, Expected To Fetch Millions

A mysterious painting found in the basement of a house initially discarded by an Italian couple turned out to be an art of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso which is said to be worth millions of pounds today. Luigi Lo Rosso used to spend his days combing abandoned houses and landfills in search of treasure to sell in his family’s pawn shop in Pompeii, Italy. In 1962, the junk dealer found a rolled-up canvas with an asymmetrical painting of a woman in the villa’s basement on the nearby island of Capri. Six decades later, a graphologist for a patrimony court in Milan finally certified Picasso’s signature on the painting as authentic. After completing the authentication formalities, Luigi Lo Rosso’s family is looking for an auction.

The painting is believed to be a distorted image of French photographer and poet Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover. The oil painting on canvas features Pablo Picasso’s asymmetrical style of a woman in a blue dress with red lipstick. After discovering it, Lo Rosso didn’t like the signature on the upper left corner of the painting. According to him, Picasso meant nothing to him, said Luigi Lo Rosso’s son Andrea Lo Rosso while talking to CNN reporters. Luigi Lo Rosso died before putting it in a cheap frame and giving it to his wife, much to her surprise.

She didn’t think it was pretty enough to sell, so it hung in the family home for about 50 years and later in a restaurant they owned. “When mom hung it on the wall to decorate the house, renaming it ‘the scribble’ due to the strangeness of the woman’s face depicted, I wasn’t even born yet,” Andrea Lo Rosso said.

While recalling his dad’s stories, Andrea Lo Rosso said two canvases were recovered from the Capri Dump site. Only one was signed by the Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso. One day, Andrea Lo Rosso was reading about the history of art and he noticed the signature on the painting. Thus, began the decades-long investigation of the painting.

The artwork has been locked in a vault in Milan since 2019. Finally, last month Cinzia Altieri, a graphologist for a patrimony court in Milan, was able to certify the Picasso signature as authentic. The painting is likely to be worth around 6 million Pounds (Rs 66.70 crore).