Woman who won a £900,000 Picasso
After son gave her raffle ticket for Christmas (which cost him £90)...
of course, you’re still very grateful for your woollen socks and smellies. But, oh! To have a son like Lorenzo Naso, who – in a roundabout way – gave his lucky mum a Picasso for Christmas.
Italian accountant Claudia Borgogno became a millionaire overnight when a raffle ticket, bought as a gift by her son, yesterday won her an oil painting by the artist worth £900,000, or one million euros.
Mr Naso bought two tickets at 100 euros (£90) each in December in the hope of getting his hands on the signed still life, painted by Picasso in 1921. The work, entitled Nature Morte (or Still Life), measures nine by 18 inches and shows a newspaper and a glass of absinthe on a wooden table. It was valued at a million euros – but David Nahmad, the billionaire art collector who offered it to the charity lottery, said the work is worth ‘at least two or three times’ that.
Mrs Borgogno, 58, from Ventimiglia in northern Italy, said it is ‘incredible’, adding: ‘I have never won anything before.’
Son Mr Naso, an analyst, added: ‘It was maybe the best decision of my life. It was a pretty awful period for us during this lockdown and now this is great news.’
The ticket was picked in an electronic draw at auctioneer Christie’s in Paris, which sold 51,140 tickets in total. The proceeds will go to providing water for villages in Madagascar and Cameroon. Mr Nahmad, who has world’s the largest private collection of 300 Picassos, will get £806,000 for the work.