Someone found a 'junk' painting in the attic — experts say it’s an original Picasso worth millions

Sometimes treasure lies in plain sight! A man was taken aback when he found a "junk" painting in his father's attic and realized that it was actually a Pablo Picasso painting worth more than $6 million. 

Speaking with The Guardian, Andrea Lo Rosso, 60, said that his father Luigi found the painting in 1962 while he was cleaning out a house in his hometown in Italy. “My father was from Capri and would collect junk to sell for next to nothing," he said. 

However, after he returned home to Pompeii, Andrea's mother tried to convince him to throw the painting away because she didn't find it beautiful. "He found the painting before I was even born and he didn’t have a clue who Picasso was," Andrea explained. "He wasn’t a very cultured person. My mother didn’t want to keep it, she kept saying it was horrible."

For decades the painting was hung in a shabby frame in the living room. Growing up Andrea would always wonder if it was really Picasso's painting. "While reading about Picasso’s works in the encyclopedia, I would look up at the painting and compare it to his signature. I kept telling my father it was similar, but he didn’t see it,” Andrea said.  

After both his parents passed, Andrea turned to Arcadia Foundation’s scientific committee which deals with valuations, as well as restorations in an effort to get the painting analyzed. "After all the other examinations of the painting were done, I was given [the] job of studying the signature," Cinza Altieri, a graphologist and member of the Arcadia Foundation, said. "I worked on it for months, comparing it with some of his original works. There is no doubt that the signature is his. There was no evidence suggesting that it was false," Altieri added.

The painting depicts a distorted image of Dora Maar, a French painter and photographer who was Picasso’s mistress and muse. According to experts, the painting was made sometime between 1930 and 1936, when Picasso frequently visited the island of Capri. The painting is also extremely similar to Picasso’s Buste de Femme, which was inspired by Maar and rediscovered in 2019 after being stolen in 1999.

Luca Marcante, the Arcadia Foundation’s president, said that the recently discovered painting might be two versions of the same artwork. “They could both be an original,” Marcante told local outlet Il Giorno. “They are probably two portraits, not exactly the same, of the same subject painted by Picasso at two different times. Currently, Marcante is planning to take the painting and present it to the Picasso Foundation for appraisal. This is because the foundation is extremely thorough when it comes to its evaluations, as it gets hundreds of messages from people claiming to have an original painting.

"I am curious to know what they say," Lo Rosso said. "We were just a normal family, and the aim has always been to establish the truth. We’re not interested in making money out of it," he added.