When Gardeners Cut Back Some Overgrown Ivy, They Solved A Decades-Old Art Mystery

Painted more than 100 years ago, Portrait of a Lady is a fine example of the Austrian artist’s foray into Expressionism. But back in 1997, it disappeared from the gallery that had housed it for more than seven decades. And even though a number of clues teased investigators over the years, its whereabouts were an ongoing mystery.

As the years ticked by, Portrait of a Lady became famous as the second most-wanted missing painting in the world. In fact, only Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence was more sought after. So how, after more than two decades, did two gardeners accidentally succeed where Italian police could not?

Born in the Austrian Empire in July 1862 Klimt developed an interest in painting from an early age. Today, he is considered a symbolist artist, although much of his work incorporated elements of Art Nouveau. And in 1897 he became one of the founding members of the famous Vienna Secession movement.

Some eight years after parting ways with the Vienna Secession, Klimt began work on a portrait of an unknown subject. Painted in an Expressionist style, it depicts a dark-haired woman glancing over her left shoulder. And at just 24 by 22 inches, it is far smaller than some of the artist’s more famous pieces.

By 1917 Klimt had finished the painting, entitled Portrait of a Lady. But sadly, it would be one of the last pieces that he would ever complete. On February 6, 1918, he passed away at the age of 55. And just seven years later, the work was acquired by the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in Piacenza, northern Italy.

For 70 years, Portrait of a Lady was displayed in pride of place alongside works by other great 19th and 20th century artists. Then, in 1996, a teenage art student named Claudia Maga made an incredible discovery. While reading The Complete Works of Gustav Klimt, she realized that two of the symbolist’s paintings bore a number of striking similarities.

Yes, in the book Maga saw a reproduction of Portrait of a Young Lady, a painting that had been lost since 1912. And even though the subject, unlike the woman in Portrait of a Lady, was adorned with a scarf and hat, the two pieces had much in common. As well as depicting women in identical poses, for example, both also showed them with matching smiles and beauty spots.

Curious to learn more, Maga enlarged and traced the two images, confirming her suspicions that they were indeed a perfect match. Perhaps, she speculated, Portrait of a Young Lady had never gone missing at all. Instead, she suspected that Klimt had painted Portrait of a Lady over his earlier work.

Now, in the art world, this is known as a double portrait. However, up until this point, there were no known examples of Klimt painting this type of work. Nevertheless, Maga approached Ferdinando Arisi, the director of the Ricci Oddi gallery, with her theory. And soon, the pair decided to get to the bottom of the matter once and for all.

So Arisi removed Portrait of a Lady from its frame and took it to a local hospital. There, technicians passed the painting through an x-ray machine. And sure enough, the art student was proved right – another, earlier piece was hidden beneath the brushstrokes of Klimt’s later work.

Before long, a tragic story had emerged surrounding the painting that Klimt chose to forget. Apparently, the subject of Portrait of a Young Lady was a woman with whom the artist was deeply in love. For a while, it seems, she became his muse, before dying suddenly in unknown circumstances.

Heartbroken, Klimt painted a new piece on top of the portrait of his lost love – perhaps to avoid the painful memories. And for decades, his secret remained safely hidden beneath layers of paint. But once the owners realized the truth, they wasted no time in planning an exhibition to celebrate the incredible discovery.

However, this decision would kickstart one of the most daring heists that the art world has ever seen. As staff at the Ricci Oddi gallery began to prepare for the exhibition, workers moved in to carry out renovation works to the building. And soon, the hallways and rooms were thronging with people.

On February 22, 1997, in the midst of this bustle of activity, Portrait of a Lady disappeared. And at first, in the chaos, nobody noticed that it had gone missing. Eventually, gallery employees realized that the painting’s absence wasn’t part of the ongoing work and contacted the Italian police. But according to Salvatore Cavallaro, who was a sergeant major at the time, the crime scene was a mess.

“The doors of the gallery were open, people were going in and out, the security system was switched off,” Sgt. Cavallaro recalled in a 2016 interview with the BBC. With not much to go on, the authorities could do little to help the devastated Arisi recover the painting. And as the months passed, no new leads materialized.

In fact, the only clue to the mysterious disappearance was the frame of Portrait of a Lady. Apparently, it had been discovered – now empty of its valuable contents – abandoned on the roof of the gallery. At the time, investigators theorized that a nearby skylight may have been crucial to the crime.

Had a thief, basing themselves on the roof of the building, somehow fished the painting out of the open skylight? Although it seemed a plausible theory, Cavallaro soon dismissed this notion. According to him, the opening in the roof was not large enough for the heavy, gilded frame to have fitted through.

Eventually, just over a month after the painting’s disappearance, there came a break in the case. Some 180 miles away on the border between Italy and France, officials confiscated a package addressed to Bettino Craxi, the former Italian prime minister. At the time, the ex-politician was under investigation for corruption and was in hiding in the Tunisian town of Hammamet.

For a brief moment, it seemed as if the mystery had been solved. Inside the package, officials discovered what appeared to be Portrait of a Lady, still intact despite its ordeal. Anxious to be reunited with the painting, Arisi and Stefano Fugazza, the new director of the gallery, headed to the border to inspect the find.

Sadly, however, they were to be disappointed – the painting was a fake. And with no further leads to go on, the case was closed. For years, Portrait of a Lady remained missing, becoming one of the most legendary lost paintings of all time. Then, in 2013, the case was reopened.

Apparently, investigators had been able to recover a partial fingerprint from Portrait of a Lady’s abandoned frame. And thanks to new technological advances, they hoped that they might be able to identify the culprit. However, this approach was ultimately unsuccessful. Then, in the summer of 2016, police questioned an infamous art thief about the unsolved crime.

So the unnamed thief allegedly claimed that he had been behind the heist almost 20 years before. However, he denied that he had spirited Portrait of a Lady away through the skylight on the roof. Instead, he insisted, he had actually stolen the painting some months before its disappearance was discovered.

According to the alleged thief, the crime was an inside job – and one that he carried out in plain sight. With help from someone working at the gallery, he claimed, he simply swapped Portrait of a Lady for a forged copy and walked out of the building. However, with the new exhibition looming, he had grown concerned that someone would notice that the painting was fake.

In an even stranger twist, the thief told an Italian journalist that he had attempted to cover up his crime by returning to the gallery and stealing the fake painting. And apparently, he had discarded the frame on the roof to point investigators in the wrong direction. Most incredible, however, was his claim that the original Portrait of a Lady would be returned on the 20th anniversary of its disappearance.

Sadly, however, that date came and went with no sign of the missing painting. And as the years passed, the whereabouts of Portrait of a Lady continued to elude investigators. By 2019, it was valued at around $66 million and was considered one of history’s most sought-after missing paintings.

That December, however, the mystery would finally be solved. Or at least partly. For on the 10th two gardeners were working at the Ricci Oddi gallery, busying themselves removing ivy from the building’s walls. Suddenly, they discovered something strange – a metal panel concealed behind the leaves of the creeping vine.

When the gardeners moved the panel aside, they discovered that it had been covering a small cavity inside the gallery’s exterior wall. And inside that recess, there was a black garbage bag. Unwrapping the plastic, the workers could not quite believe what was nestled within – the lost Klimt painting, missing for 23 years.

For the people of Piacenza, it was an incredible discovery. Had their treasure really been returned to them after all this time? According to local councilor Jonathan Papamerenghi, the mood was a celebratory one. “It’s a great, great moment for the city, and for the art community,” he told The New York Times in January 2020.

By this point, however, the authorities knew that there were at least three forged copies of Portrait of a Lady in existence. And so, the painting was duly submitted to a series of tests in order to determine its authenticity. Using x-ray technology, experts scanned the painting for traces of Klimt’s earlier work.

Sure enough, investigators spotted what was left of Portrait of a Young Lady beneath the famous painting. And that wasn’t all – they also detected the stamp of the Ricci Oddi gallery on the piece itself. Armed with this evidence, they were able to conclude that the discovery was the real deal.

On January 17, 2020, officials announced that the painting was authentic. But how had Portrait of a Lady ended up hidden behind a secret door in the gallery wall? That same day, La Libertà puzzled over the strange enigma, calling it, “A mystery within a mystery for which the investigations are ongoing.”

But while experts struggled to understand how the painting had reappeared after all these years, police were already questioning two suspects. Before the authenticity of the piece was confirmed, it seems, Italian journalist Ermanno Mariani had received a strange letter. In it, a thief who he had met several years previously claimed to know the truth.

According to the letter, Mariani’s acquaintance had, along with an accomplice, stolen Portrait of a Lady from the Ricci Oddi gallery back in 1997. And for 20 years, the pair had stored the painting securely in an undisclosed location. However, they claim, they ultimately decided to return the piece as a “gift to the city.”

On the same day that experts confirmed the authenticity of the gardeners’ discovery, police interviewed the men who had written to Mariani. And shockingly, it emerged that this wasn’t the first time that they had admitted the crime. Moreover, they claimed that the painting had been in the recess for several years before being found.

“They said they returned the painting four years ago,” the mens’ lawyer, Guido Gulieri, told the Guardian in January 2020. “But we don’t yet know the details of how it came to be [in the recess] and what exactly happened to the painting in the intervening years. They had confessed before but were not believed.”

Meanwhile, Mariani cast doubt on the notion that Portrait of a Lady could have been in the recess all along. “[The suspects] have been obscure about the details but have always maintained that the painting was not in the cavity all of that time. I’m not a technical expert, but it would have been damaged if it had been there for all those years.”

But if the suspects’ account is true, why have they decided to confess after getting away with it for so long? According to Italian law, a 20-year statute of limitations applies to the crime – meaning that the men cannot be prosecuted even if they are guilty. But even so, it seems odd that they would come forward after so many years.

“It is a very strange story… They could have sold it, or burned it, or whatever,” Gulieri told the Guardian. “They won’t go to prison for it. But the good news is, we have found the painting.” Elsewhere, some have pointed out that the men are due to be sentenced in relation to another crime. Might they have hoped to gain some leniency by confessing to the theft of Portrait of a Lady?

Interestingly, Mariani believes that whoever stole the Klimt painting might also have been behind another Piacenza crime that once devastated the art world. Back in 1984 hundreds of historic illuminated manuscripts were stolen from the city’s library – by thieves using a similar modus operandi. And as the Ricci Oddi gallery celebrates the return of Portrait of a Lady, there must be some hope that these treasures might also find their way back home.