Stolen Pablo Picasso painting 'The Hairdresser' worth millions discovered in New York

The painting, known as "La Coiffeuse" or "The Hairdresser," is estimated to be worth millions of dollars, US prosecutors said.

NEW YORK (AFP).- A Picasso painting, snatched more than a decade ago from a storeroom in Paris, has surfaced in New York and will be returned to the French government, US officials said Thursday. The century-old Cubist oil was smuggled into the United States last December from Belgium with a shipping label that described the contents as a handicraft holiday present worth 30 euros ($37).

The painting, known as "La Coiffeuse" or "The Hairdresser," is estimated to be worth millions of dollars, US prosecutors said. It was intercepted by US customs and subsequently seized by Homeland Security Investigations. "A lost treasure has been found," said Loretta Lynch, attorney for the eastern district of New York. "Because of the blatant smuggling in this case, this painting is now subject to forfeiture to the United States.

Forfeiture of the painting will extract it from the grasp of the black market in stolen art so that it can be returned to its rightful owner," added Lynch, who is also the US Attorney General nominee. Painted in 1911, the oil-on-canvas measures 33 by 46 centimeters (13 by 18 inches) and is part of the Musee National d'Art Moderne collection in Paris. It was last exhibited publicly in Munich, Germany, where it was on loan to the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung.

It was then returned to Paris and placed in the storerooms of the Centre George Pompidou. Officials only realized it was missing when a loan request came through in 2001 and they could not find it.

More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/76764/Stolen-Pablo-Picasso-painting--The-Hairdresser--worth-millions-discovered-in-New-York#.VPJ0lsnwPZc[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org

Man gets 10 years for stealing priceless 12th-century manuscript in Spain

In this file photo Dean Jose Maria Diaz observes a facsimile copy of Calixtinus Codex at Santiago de Compostela's cathedral

MADRID (AFP).- A Spanish court sentenced a man on Wednesday to 10 years in prison for crimes including the theft of a priceless medieval document considered the first guidebook to Spain's Saint James pilgrimage trail. Police recovered the unique 12th-century manuscript in July 2012, a year after it was found to have gone missing from a safe in the famous cathedral of the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela. Judges in a court in the nearby city of La Coruna said in a written ruling that they "consider it proven" that an electrician who worked for years at the cathedral, Manuel Fernandez Castineiras, stole the manuscript. They also sentenced him for the theft of money and other documents, and for money-laundering, the ruling said.

Fernandez's wife was also sentenced to six months on the latter charge. The court ordered them each to pay a fine of 268,000 euros (304,000 dollars). The court found that Fernandez took the manuscript, dubbed the Codex Calixtinus, and hid it among newspapers in a bag in his garage, where police found it in a "well preserved" state. A security video shown at the trial appeared to show him in a cathedral study stuffing money into the pockets of his pants.

The richly-decorated Codex is considered one of the Western world's first travel guide books. Among other things it details the route by which the body of Saint James, Spain's patron saint, was taken from Jerusalem to Santiago after his death. That route became known as "the Way of Saint James". It still draws travellers from around the world to the city and its Catholic cathedral, where the apostle's remains are said to be entombed. The manuscript is thought to have been commissioned by Pope Callixtus II, who encouraged such pilgrimages. The 225-page illuminated manuscript contains a collection of texts including sermons, homilies to Saint James and practical travel advice to pilgrims.

More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/76585/Man-gets-10-years-for-stealing-priceless-12th-century-manuscript-in-Spain#.VOYzei7j1-4[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org

Former electrician and his wife on trial in France over 271 'stolen' Pablo Picasso works

Pierre Le Guennec (R), who is accused of receiving stolen goods after being found in possession of paintings by late Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, sits with his wife Danielle at the court in Grasse, southeastern France on February 10, 2015. Le Guennec, a former electrician, is set to go on trial along with his wife for receiving stolen goods regarding some 271 artworks by Picasso which Le Guennec claims were given to him by Picasso and his wife Jacqueline when he carried out work on their villa in Mougins in the 1970's. AFP PHOTO / VALERY HACHE.


GRASSE (AFP).- A former electrician and his wife who kept 271 works of art by Picasso in their garage for close to 40 years went on trial in France on Tuesday accused of possessing stolen goods. Pierre Le Guennec, now 75 and retired, says the world-famous artist and his wife Jacqueline gave him the oil canvases, drawings and Cubist collages when he was doing work on the last property they lived in before Picasso died in 1973.

But some of the artist's heirs, including his son Claude, suspect otherwise and filed a complaint against the couple, who were charged in 2011. And in a significant twist to the trial on Tuesday, Claude Picasso's lawyer accused Le Guennec of being the "front" for a "case of international artwork laundering." Total confidence in me "Picasso had total confidence in me. Maybe it was my discretion," Le Guennec told the court in the southeastern city of Grasse at the start of a three-day trial which is likely to be closely scrutinised by the art world. "Monsieur and Madame called me 'little cousin'." The former electrician said that one day, Picasso's wife Jacqueline gave him a box with the 271 works of art inside. "She told me 'this is for you'," he said. When he got home, he looked inside and found "drawings, sketches, crumpled paper," adding he and his wife Danielle did not look through everything. Asked by the judge whether he wasn't a little curious, he responded: "no." "I didn't have in mind that they were works of art, they were essays, torn bits, it didn't grab me. "It's not as if I saw a painting, it's not the same, it's not the same reaction." He put the present in his garage and discovered it again years later, in 2009. But when he went to Paris the following year to get the works authenticated at the Picasso Administration, the artist's heirs filed an official complaint.

Claude Picasso, who runs the administration, is one of the plaintiffs in the case. Others include Paloma, Claude's sister, another child Maya, two grandchildren and Catherine Hutin-Blay, the daughter of Picasso's last wife Jacqueline. "I never could see how anyone could swallow that," Maya Widmaier-Picasso said of the defence's argument. "It's like going to the bakery for a baguette and he gives you 271!" she told the court. Picasso granddaughter Catherine Hutin-Blay, the only one of the plaintiffs to have known Le Guennec, admitted that the electrician had a privileged relationship with the artist. "We really trusted him. He was someone who was very familiar in the house and had an absolutely friendly relationship," she said. "However, all this absolutely extraordinary collection, Picasso would never have given that," she added.

Global artwork laundering? Under the charge of possessing stolen goods, the lawyers do not have to demonstrate who the alleged thief was but do have to prove that the couple knew the works of art came from a fraudulent origin. And in a twist to the case, Jean-Jacques Neuer, Claude Picasso's lawyer, accused Le Guennec of being the cover for "a case of international artwork laundering." "These stolen works were given to him because he had had ties with Picasso," he said. Le Guennec had said earlier Tuesday that he made a list of the artworks before presenting it to the Picasso Administration in 2010, with the help of his brother-in-law who had a gallery. But Neuer accused him of never having made any such lists, which he said were too detailed for someone who knew little about art.

In one example cited by the lawyer, the former electrician said that a small pencil drawing had similarities with a 1915 painting of a harlequin exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Neuer had also pointed out before the trial that none of the works in Le Guennec's possession were signed, an unusual occurrence for Picasso who always autographed his work -- whether he gave it away or sold it. The couple's lawyer Charles-Etienne Gudin, however, has said there were only a dozen works of value and that the rest was "very mediocre," insisting that Picasso never tried to sell them. He added that it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to steal from Picasso, as the artist had "an amazing memory" and his property was heavily protected like a "fortress."
© 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse

More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/76373/Former-electrician-and-his-wife-on-trial-in-France-over-271--stolen--Pablo-Picasso-works#.VNvrXy7j1-4[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

Leonardo da Vinci painting, about to be sold for $135 million, seized at Swiss bank

A leading Italian da Vinci expert, Carlo Pedretti, has said he believes the work to be the completed oil version of the Mona Lisa artist's sketch of d'Este, which now hangs in the Louvre in Paris.

ROME (AFP).- A hugely valuable painting believed to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci has been seized from a Swiss bank on the orders of Italian police who suspect it was moved out of the country illegally. Italian prosecutors said Tuesday that the painting, a portrait of Renaissance noblewoman Isabella d'Este, had been seized from a vault in Lugano, near the Italian border.

At the time of its seizure on Monday, negotiations were under way to sell the painting -- which reportedly belongs to a wealthy Italian family based in Switzerland -- for 120 million euros (over $135 million), the prosecutors said in a statement. The painting was found to be in Switzerland in 2013 after Italian authorities were alerted that a local lawyer had been given a mandate to sell it for a minimum of 95 million euros.

A leading Italian da Vinci expert, Carlo Pedretti, has said he believes the work to be the completed oil version of the Mona Lisa artist's sketch of d'Este, which now hangs in the Louvre in Paris. Other experts have cast doubt on whether the painting is 100 percent the work of Leonardo, suggesting it could have simply been done in his style on the basis of the Louvre sketch, or started by the master and completed at a later date by one or more of his students. Italy holds one of the world's largest concentrations of artistic heritage and is often the target of art traffickers. Italian police in January seized over 5,000 ancient artefacts in a record 45-million-euro haul after dismantling a Swiss-Italian trafficking ring.


More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/76387/Leonardo-da-Vinci-painting--about-to-be-sold-for--135-million--seized-at-Swiss-bank#.VNvp7y7j1-4[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org © 1994-2015 Agence France-Presse