ITALY RECOVERS FOURTEEN STOLEN PAINTINGS FROM COLLECTION OF CONVICTED MAFIOSO

The ARCA Blog reports that Italian police have recovered fourteen paintings from apartments throughout southern Italy. Following a search warrant, authorities discovered a painting of Jesus healing a blind man in a pensioner’s home in the Reggio Calabria province. After the painting, stolen in 2001 in Randozzo, Sicily, was crosschecked on the country’s database of stolen cultural property, it led law enforcement to another apartment in Messina, Sicily, where thirteen more paintings were recovered, including one by Salvador Dalí and others by Renato Guttuso, Giuliana Cappello, and Mario Pinizzotto.

These fourteen works are thought to have been part of the private collection of Gioacchino Campolo, a businessman with ties to both the ‘Ndrangheta and Camorra criminal organizations. The owner of the property where the paintings were discovered is suspected to have potentially been a former employee of Campolo and has been charged with receiving stolen goods. Campolo was sentenced to sixteen years house arrest in 2011 for running tricked slot machines. His assets, including an art collection and cash in twenty-seven bank accounts, were reportedly spread across properties in Paris, Rome, Milan, and his hometown of Reggio Calabria.

The Italian government previously seized 125 artworks from Campolo’s collection in 2013, though twenty-two were apparently forgeries and only eighty-five are proven originals. They became government property. These pieces, including works by Giorgio de Chirico and Lucio Fontana, are now permanently on display at the Palace of Culture in Reggio Calabria.