For decades, a Cubist-style painting hung on the wall of Luigi Lo Rosso’s home in Capri. Found in a villa’s cellar in 1962, the artwork had a signature scrawled “Picasso” in the corner and a woman’s face contorted in a way that unnerved his wife. She hated it. Luigi thought little of it, framing it cheaply.
Now, that painting is stirring excitement in the art world. Experts recently attributed it to Pablo Picasso and stated it could be a portrait of Dora Maar, the French photographer and painter who was Picasso’s lover and muse.
Luigi’s son, Andrea Lo Rosso, recalls how his father found the painting. “My father was from Capri and used to collect junk to sell for next to nothing,” Andrea related to The Guardian. He found the painting before I was born and didn’t know who Picasso was. He wasn’t a very cultured person.” For years, his mother wanted to get rid of it.
Over time, however, Andrea began to believe this “horrible” painting might be something more. He had started researching and noticed that the signature on the portrait looked uncannily like Picasso’s. So, they sought expert opinions. They contacted the Arcadia Foundation, an organisation specialising in art attributions and appraisals.
A team of curators, including handwriting expert Dr Cinzia Altieri and renowned art detective Maurizio Seracini of Florence, investigated the painting. After a close investigation, the team declared that the signature belonged to Picasso. The painting is believed to have been executed between 1930 and 1936, during one of Picasso’s visits to Capri. The subject is presumed to be Dora Maar, the Surrealist artist and poet who was Picasso’s partner during that time.
Maar’s work has re-emerged in recent years, overshadowed as it always was by this relationship with Picasso. In 2019 alone, prominent museums like the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London featured her retrospective.
The painting could fetch the Lo Rosso family a small fortune. Thus, the Arcadia Foundation estimated it was worth €6 million, or $6.7 million. However, before such a sum of money is paid for, one last obstacle must be overcome: authentication by the Picasso Foundation in Málaga. Without that official stamp of approval, the family’s painting will likely stay unsellable.
So far, the Picasso Foundation has refused to examine the work closer, dismissing it as a potential fake. The foundation reportedly receives hundreds of daily requests to authenticate works attributed to the legendary Spanish artist. For the moment, Andrea has no choice but to wait, hoping the experts change their minds.
Despite writing multiple times to the Picasso Foundation in Málaga, Andrea has been repeatedly rebuffed. Today, the family stores the painting in a vault in Milan, awaiting a final judgment on its authenticity.
However, in a twist, some experts said the painting could be one of two versions of Picasso’s similar portrait of Dora Maar. “They could both be originals,” Arcadia Foundation president Luca Marcante told Il Giorno. “They are probably two portraits, not the same, of the same subject painted by Picasso at two different times.”
Whether this is an overlooked masterpiece remains to be seen. While Andrea waits for the final verdict from the Picasso Foundation, the canvas remains hidden, no longer on the Lo Rosso family wall but in a vault in Milan. For the time being, as its history, the fate of the painting remains open to question.
“I am curious to know what they say,” Andrea Lo Rosso admitted. So is the rest of the art world.
Visit