Painting Thought to Be Picasso Original Found in Basement by Junk Dealer Could Be Worth Millions, Experts Say

Mar. 15, 2025

Andrea Lo Rosso with the painting experts believe to be a Picasso original; the family with the artwork in the background.Photo:Al/ROPI via ZUMA Press

Al/ROPI via ZUMA Press

The asymmetrical picture, featuring Picasso’s trademark scribble, is of a woman with brown hair wearing a blue dress and red lipstick.

Not thinking too much of it when he found it at the time, Luigi’s son, Andrea Lo Rosso, told CNN that his father put the painting in a cheap frame and gifted it to his wife.

Andrea Lo Rosso with the family’s painting.Al/ROPI via ZUMA Press

Instead of selling it, she hung it up in the family home for five decades before later putting it in their restaurant, because she reportedly didn’t think it was nice enough to sell.

“When Mom hung it on the wall to decorate the house, renaming it ‘The Scribble’ due to the strangeness of the woman’s face depicted, I wasn’t even born yet,” Andrea told the outlet.

The Lo Rosso family with the painting in the background.Al/ROPI via ZUMA Press

Dr. Cinzia Altieri— who is a certified forensic graphologist and member of the scientific committee of theArcadia Foundation— valued the painting at around $6.6 million, perThe Guardian.

“After all the other examinations of the painting were done, I was given [the] job of studying the signature,” Altieri 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."

Andrea, whose father has since died, toldThe Guardianthat his mother “didn’t want to keep” the painting and “kept saying it was horrible.”

“My father was from Capri and would collect junk to sell for next to nothing,” he told the paper.

Pablo Picasso circa 1935, standing in front of his 1917 painting of his first wife Olga.Hulton Archive/Getty

Hulton Archive/Getty

“He found the painting before I was even born and didn’t have a clue who Picasso was. He wasn’t a very cultured person," Andrea continued. “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 understand. But as I grew up, I kept wondering.”

The artwork has similarities to Picasso’s ’30s painting Buste de femme (Dora Maar), and president of the Arcadia Foundation, Luca Marcante, told Italian newspaperIl Giornothat they could “both be an original” of the mistress.

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Picasso, who died in 1973 at age 91, was thought to have frequently visited the island of Capri.

PerThe Guardian, Andrea insisted the family isn’t “interested in making money” out of the painting, but is reportedly interested in bringing it to the attention of thePicasso Foundation, despite the Málaga, Spain-based office previously not believing it to be an original.

source: people.com