The Caravaggio Nativity, Palermo
Cut from the wall of an oratory and never seen again
Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
In 1969 Caravaggio's 'Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence' was crudely cut from its frame in a Palermo oratory. Long linked to the Sicilian Mafia, it remains one of the world's most-wanted missing paintings.
One of Caravaggio's late masterpieces, the altarpiece was taken during the night from the Oratory of San Lorenzo. Testimony from Mafia informants over the decades has offered contradictory fates — hidden, damaged by rats and flooding, destroyed, or burned — but no reliable trace has ever surfaced.
The theft sits at the top of the FBI's list of major unrecovered works and has become emblematic of how organised crime treats masterpieces as collateral. A high-resolution replica now hangs in the oratory in the painting's place.