Lost Caravaggio Nativity Resurfaces in Rare Film Footage

A newly discovered 16mm film from the early 1960s captures Caravaggio's stolen Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis, swiped from Palermo's Oratorio di San Lorenzo in October 1969. The footage, part of the documentary Lo scultore degli angeli focusing on Giacomo Serpotta's stucco decorations, was found abandoned at Palermo's zootechnical institute and rescued by filmmaker Sergio Gianfalla. He digitized the deteriorating reel, which briefly shows the painting—then believed to be Caravaggio's last work. The film was originally produced for a quality prize and screened in cinemas. Separately, a black-and-white RAI broadcast, Il melodramma di stucco, aired on the program Capolavori nascosti in August 1969, just two months before the theft, and may have sparked interest leading to the crime. Recent archival research by Michele Cuppone and Roberta Lapucci, published in Valori Tattili, reveals that the painting was executed in Rome in 1600, not in Sicily in 1609, and identifies a second ancient copy from a photo in Roberto Longhi's archive, once owned by fascist hierarch Luigi Federzoni and now lost. The original remains on the FBI's Top Ten art crimes list.