A Renaissance painting stolen more than half a century ago has been returned to Italy after a British woman agreed to relinquish ownership following a lengthy mediation process.
The Madonna and Child, a tempera painting on wood attributed to 16th-century painter Antonio Solario, vanished from Belluno’s Civic Museum in 1973 during a heist in which half a dozen other works were also taken.
It resurfaced in 2017 when Barbara de Dozsa, based in Norfolk, attempted to sell it at auction. An art expert flagged the work as listed in the Italian Carabinieri’s database of stolen artworks, prompting the sale to be blocked.
De Dozsa had inherited the painting from her late husband, Baron de Dozsa, who is believed to have purchased it in good faith from an Austrian dealer shortly after the theft. Initially, she refused to return it, citing the UK’s Limitation Act, which prevents legal claims being brought after too much time has passed.
The stalemate was broken through the intervention of Christopher Marinello, an Italian-American lawyer and CEO of Art Recovery International, whose ancestors hail from the Veneto region where Belluno is located and worked on the case pro bono. He was alerted by an art specialist advising De Dozsa and began negotiations around 18 months ago.
With UK police reluctant to seize the painting, Marinello says, he pursued a civil resolution. “It took negotiation—and negotiation is really not what law enforcement does,” he told The Art Newspaper.
He convinced De Dozsa that retaining the work was a legal liability. “If she tried to sell it again, it would be halted. She’d have to go to Italy, file a lawsuit and try to remove it from multiple databases—possibly without success and at huge cost.”
Following an agreement, the painting was transferred from Norfolk to the Italian Embassy in London and formally returned to Belluno yesterday in a ceremony attended by police, cultural officials and politicians. The transport costs—amounting to “a few thousand euros”, says Marinello —were covered by a donation from the insurance company Generali’s art branch. Carlo Cavalli, curator of the Civic Museum, described Marinello’s role as “decisive”.
Marco Perale, a Belluno city councillor and former vice-mayor for culture, said the painting’s recovery had been delayed by Covid-related bureaucratic backlogs and the post-Brexit removal of EU cultural property restitution laws.
The recovered work will remain on public view at the museum until 27 July, where it will be exhibited alongside two Madonnas by Bartolomeo Montagna that were also stolen in the 1973 heist and later recovered. It will then undergo restoration as absorbed humidity has caused its panels to warp and paint to flake. It will return to the museum’s permanent collection following the restoration.
