‘I realized I had sort of a Mona Lisa’: Italian art collector who bought stolen Winston Churchill portrait enjoyed it for 18 months without knowing

[shockedcanadian]

The guy bought a classic portrait of Churchill. Brother Cassinelli would have been resistance of Mussolini back in the day.

G-d love him even though he had to give it back. He didn't know it was stolen and the original portrait as he bought it at an auction lol.

‘I realized I had sort of a Mona Lisa’: Italian art collector who bought stolen Winston Churchill portrait enjoyed it for 18 months without knowing for sure it was wanted by police

Court documents identified 43-year-old Jeffrey Wood, of Powassan, Ont., in the alleged forgery and theft of “The Roaring Lion” portrait — by famous Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh — from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier.

www.thestar.com

Cassinelli, a corporate lawyer and small-scale contemporary art collector in Genoa, Italy, thought he was buying a signed copy of the portrait when he discovered it at auction. He said he would never have imagined that his nearly $10,000 purchase was the original masterpiece.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“At the time, I couldn’t know what I really bought. The theft hadn’t been discovered yet,” he said from his home in Italy on Thursday.
Cassinelli learned about the theft of the original piece in Ottawa in October, 2022, when someone from the auction house that sold him the artwork called to tell him not to sell the portrait due to an investigation.
Immediately, he started reading news reports about it online and waited for a call from Canadian authorities.