A British woman won't give up a 16th-century Italian piece of art that she says her late husband bought in the early '70s—and that authorities now say is stolen. Per the Guardian, a "Madonna and Child" painting by Antonio Solario had been housed at Italy's Civic Museum of Belluno for a century, until it was stolen in 1973 along with a bunch of other art. Barbara de Dozsa says her husband stumbled across the Solario piece soon after and scooped it up without knowing it was stolen, and the painting remained in their home in Norfolk until they divorced.
When Barbara de Dozsa tried to sell the painting in 2017, someone from the Belluno museum found out and knew that everyone from the Italian police force to Interpol was on the lookout for it. However, because there were COVID-related delays in Italian authorities getting the right provenance paperwork to UK police, they eventually handed the painting back to de Dozsa. She has since argued, under a British statute-of-limitations act, that she's the rightful owner after six years, since her husband's purchase of the painting wasn't tied to the original theft.
Art specialist lawyer Christopher Marinello says de Dozsa has already received a letter from local police telling her that even though she still has possession of the painting, she doesn't own the title. He says he's also tried to persuade her to return the painting. "It's the right thing to do," he tells the Guardian.
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Solario—who was nicknamed "the Gypsy," per the London Times—trained in Venice and did much of his work in the first 20 years of the 16th century. Another of his "Madonna and Child" paintings had been on the auction block at Christie's in 2023, with an estimated price tag of $155,000, but it failed to attract a buyer. The Times details other stolen art that was eventually recovered, including a da Vinci painting stolen from a Scottish castle in 2003 and a Van Gogh painting returned to an art investigator in an Ikea bag. (More stolen art stories.)
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