Overview
- Prosecutors in Rome are investigating suspected illicit export and receiving of cultural property after three supposed masterworks were found to be copies in a Turin Lingotto vault.
- The copied works are Giacomo Balla’s La scala degli addii, Giorgio De Chirico’s Mistero e malinconia di una strada, and Claude Monet’s Glaçons, effet blanc, whose originals remain untraced.
- Carabinieri are also searching for ten other high‑value pieces, including works attributed to Balthus, Francis Bacon, Robert Indiana, Georges Mathieu, Pablo Picasso, and John Singer Sargent.
- No Ministry of Culture authorization documents have been located for any transfers of the thirteen paintings, and investigators are reviewing photographic archives, inventories, shipping records, and witness statements.
- Household staff and two shippers told investigators that swaps occurred around 2008 during Marella Caracciolo’s illness and that between 2016 and 2018 two paintings moved as replicas on orders from an unidentified person, while a prior Milan case against two gallerists was archived with further tracing ordered before the file shifted to Rome.