ITALIAN police have found a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in a Naples flat and returned it to a church that had no idea it had been stolen. Officers said late Monday they had arrested the 36-year-old owner of the apartment on suspicion of receiving stolen goods, after the painting was found in his bedroom cupboard.
Depicting Jesus Christ with his hand raised in a blessing and holding a crystal orb, the painting is part of the Doma Museum collection within the San Domenico Maggiore church complex in Naples.
It is a copy of Leonardo’s famous work that in 2017 became the most expensive painting ever sold, fetching $450 million at a Christie’s auction.
But the collection has been without visitors for months due to coronavirus restrictions and nobody had reported it missing.
It was not immediately clear how the police came to discover the theft of
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