Gallery chief in frame for faking Klimt theft

Diary of deceased director suggests he planned £50m portrait disappearance to get publicity for exhibition

THE mystery around the theft of a £50million Gustav Klimt painting has taken a strange twist as it emerged that the director of the Italian museum it was taken from had considered faking its disappearance to drum up publicity.

The fate of the Klimt, stolen in 1997, was unknown for more than two decades until it was discovered in bizarre circumstances in a cavity in the museum’s walls in December.

Stefano Fugazza, the director of the

Ricci Oddi gallery in the northern city of Piacenza, wrote in his diary that before the 1917 Portrait of a Lady vanished, he had considered pretending the masterpiece had been stolen to draw attention to a forthcoming exhibition of the Austrian artist’s work.

The diary entry was originally discovered by a local journalist working on the case in 2016, but has only now been seized on by investigators.

Acting on the diary information, police yesterday searched the house in Piacenza of the director’s widow, Rossella Tiadina, who is under investigation for receiving stolen goods.

“I asked myself what could be done to give the exhibition some notoriety, to make the exhibition an unprecedented public success,” the museum director wrote. “The idea that came to me was to organise a fake theft of the Klimt, just before the opening (this is exactly what happened, my God) and then for the painting to be found after the exhibition began.”

Mr Fugazza died a decade ago, but if he was involved in any way, it would confirm suspicions that the theft was an inside job.

The painting was found two months ago when gardeners clearing ivy from an external wall of the gallery came across a rusty metal door.

Behind it there was a hidden space, and inside that they found a black plastic bag containing the missing portrait.

Curators were reluctant to declare that it was definitely the missing Klimt until it was subject to extensive tests in January.

That analysis proved conclusively that it was indeed the Portrait of a Lady.

“It is with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic,” Ornella Chicca, a prosecutor involved in the case, said at the time.

Guido Cauzzi, an art expert said: “It’s gone through a few ordeals, but only needs some routine care, nothing particularly complicated.”

Then, in another odd development, two men, who had been involved in other burglaries, came forward and confessed to stealing the painting, and said they had decided to return it “as a gift” to the people of Piacenza.

They said it had not been stashed in the wall ever since it was stolen, but had been kept elsewhere.

They apparently made the confession after calculating that they would not be punished, because the 20-year statute of limitations for the crime had expired.

They may also be angling for leniency regarding sentencing in a separate theft of which they were accused.

The alleged thieves, whose claims are being investigated, may have intended to reveal the painting’s location, but were pipped to the post when the gardeners accidentally found it.

The painting has a fascinating story behind it – in the months before it disappeared, art historians using X-rays discovered that beneath the portrait of the young woman is another portrait of a different woman.

The original painting is believed to be of a woman Klimt fell in love with in Vienna. When she died, it is possible that he painted over the work in an attempt to overcome the trauma.