The theft of Caravaggio's Nativity
Palermo, Italy, 1969
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
On the night of October 17 to 18, 1969, thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo and took the "Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence", a Caravaggio canvas of around 1600, almost 2.7 meters tall, which hung above the altar. The oratory had no security system. The canvas was cut with a blade flush with its edges, separated from the frame, and the theft was only noticed on the afternoon of October 18, by one of the caretakers of the place.
The work has never been found. Over the decades, several justice collaborators linked the theft to the Sicilian mafia, with versions that do not match: one said the painting was displayed at Cosa Nostra meetings as a symbol of power; another, in 2009, that it was hidden in a stable outside Palermo and ruined by animals; another, in 2017, that it passed to a mafia boss and was sold to a Swiss dealer, who supposedly had it cut into pieces. None of these versions has been proven.
Sources
- ilpost.it/2026/08/18/furto-nativita-caravaggio/
- finestresullarte.info/en/works-and-artists/caravaggio-s-nativity-the-masterpiece-painted-in-rome-sent-to-palermo-and-stolen-in-1969
- thedailybeast.com/did-the-mafia-steal-caravaggios-nativity-of-st-francis-and-st-lawrence
- theartnewspaper.com/news/did-stolen-caravaggio-go-to-switzerland
In the game
Bone Scalpel
Palermo, Saturday, October 18, 1969, 6 pm. In a baroque oratory in the Kalsa district, all white stucco, with no alarm and no guard, the caretaker Agata Mirabella came to open up at 3 pm for the novena.
In 2018, after work by the parliamentary anti-mafia commission, the Palermo prosecutor's office reopened the investigation. The FBI put the case among the ten greatest art crimes in the world. Since December 2015, a high-fidelity reproduction, made by the Factum Arte workshop from a 1967 color photograph, has occupied the altar of the oratory, and to this day it is not known who took the canvas, where it is, or whether it still exists.
