Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Stolen $1.3M Marc Chagall Painting at Home of Soccer Star Roberto Bottega

A Marc Chagall painting stolen more than 10 years ago was discovered in the home of former Italian soccer star Roberto Bottega.

Italy’s art-theft police said Monday that “Le Nu au Bouquet,” painted in 1920 by the renowned Jewish artist and reportedly worth $1.3 million, was found in the Turin home of Bottega, formerly of the city’s Juventus squad.

Authorities said Bottega had bought the painting in good faith from a gallery in Bologna in 2003. They said he was unaware that it had been stolen a year earlier from a U.S. yacht anchored for repairs at the northern Italian port of Savona.

The thieves had replaced the original painting on the yacht with a copy and, according to media reports, had tricked the Chagall Foundation into providing a new authentication for the stolen artwork.

Italian media said three people, including the gallery owner from Bologna and two Romanians who had worked on the yacht in 2002, were under investigation.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.