Art thief ’s body found in London’s Regent’s canal

Sebastiano Magnanini stole a 1732 altarpiece painting from Venetian church in 1993

LONDON— For days, his identity was a mystery: a middle-aged man with a tattoo of a lizard or gecko on his right shoulder, found dead in London’s picturesque Regent’s Canal, his body tied to a shopping cart.

On Thursday, the police said they had solved at least part of the mystery, when fingerprints taken from the hand of the decomposed body showed that he was Sebastiano Magnanini, 46, an Italian carpenter living in South London and one of the men behind the brazen theft almost 22 years ago of a masterpiece from an unguarded church in his native Venice.

Magnanini was sentenced in 1998 to 18 months in prison after he was charged with stealing a 1732 altarpiece painting, The Education of the Virgin by Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, from the Santa Maria della Fava church in Venice. The painting was estimated to be worth two billion Italian lire at the time of its theft in 1993 — or roughly $1.15 million (U.S.) today.

Magnanini was 24 at the time, and the theft alarmed some in the country and fanned debate about how to protect treasured artwork.

The church, which had no alarm system, was unlocked. Magnanini and two other men sneaked in and evaded the priests by hiding in the church until it closed, according to the police report from the time, cited by ANSA, the Italian news agency.

The painting turned up three months later, wrapped in a sheet at a warehouse not far from Venice’s Marco Polo Airport.

London’s Metropolitan Police said Thursday that a post-mortem examination had taken place. The cause of death was not yet known.