Painting found by junk dealer turns out to be Picasso’s original portrait worth $6.5 million

A “horrible” painting found by a junk dealer turned out to be an original portrait by Pablo Picasso worth $6 Million, according to Italian experts. The painting was discovered in the cellar of the house in Capri during cleaning.

The painting was found by Luigi Lo Rosso in 1962, who took the canvas to his home in Pompeii. The art piece remained hung in a cheap frame in their living room for decades and was regularly denounced as “horrible” by his wife.

Although the painting had the signature of the famous artist, Lo Rosso did not know him. The suspicions only rose after his son Andrea started asking questions after studying an art history encyclopedia.

“My father was from Capri and would collect junk to sell for next to nothing,” Andrea told The Guardian. “He found the painting before I was even born and didn’t have a clue who Picasso was. He wasn’t a very cultured person. I kept telling my father it was similar, but he didn’t understand. But as I grew up, I kept wondering.”

“My mother didn’t want to keep it – she kept saying it was horrible,” he said, adding that there were times when the family decided to throw away the painting. Andrea revealed while his father had died, his quest to know the artist remained.

The family then contacted a team of experts from the Arcadia Foundation. The signature on the artwork was studied by Dr. Cinzia Altieri, a trained graphologist, while a chemical-scientific analysis was led by Maurizio Seracini.

According to the experts, the portrait is identified to be of Dora Maar, the French Surrealist photographer, painter, and poet, and has been attributed to Picasso. Maar is believed to be the mistress of the artist, who met her during a trip to Capri between 1930 and 1936. The pair had a nearly nine-year-long relationship. 

While Maar was herself an artist, her works have only recently gained recognition. In 2019, over 250 of her works were showcased at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London.

If the attribution is confirmed, the portrait could be valued at $6.5 million (€6 million). However, the painting has not been legitimised by official Picasso authenticators. According to Artnet, a portrait of Maar by Picasso was auctioned for $95.2 million in 2006 at Sotheby’s New York.