From left to right, former prime minister Tony Blair, Aline Chretien, wife of former prime minister Jean Chretien, Cherie Booth, Blair's wife, and former prime minister Jean Chretien in the Speaker's Chambers on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Feb. 22, 2001.FRED CHARTRAND/The Canadian Press
The Italian lawyer who unwittingly bought a portrait of Winston Churchill stolen from an Ottawa hotel says he plans to fly to Canada and take a “last selfie” with the Roaring Lion photo once it is restored to its rightful home.
Nicola Cassinelli, who bought the famed photo by Yousuf Karsh at auction in 2022, said Britain’s wartime prime minister had been “a sort of roommate” for several years.
In an interview from Genoa, he said he was bemused to have become a central figure in an international art heist drama, after he bid at auction for the signed portrait to fill a blank space on his wall by a bookcase in his living room.
“I was browsing online catalogues to see if there was something for that size, for colours and so on that could be nice in my living room. And that photograph was absolutely perfect. When I saw it, I decided to bid and when I received it in May, 2022, I was absolutely happy to have it, to enjoy it in my living room,” he recalls.
The portrait Mr. Cassinelli enjoyed gazing at was in fact the result of a daring art theft from Ottawa’s Fairmont Château Laurier hotel, where Karsh had lived with his wife Estrellita for 18 years.
Sometime between Christmas Day 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, during a COVID-19 lockdown, a thief had replaced the original Roaring Lion photograph with a print with a forged Karsh signature, the hotel later surmised.
Nobody had noticed it was missing for months. Then in August, 2022, hotel maintenance worker Bruno Lair spotted that the frame containing Karsh’s famous portrait did not match others on the wall.
The portrait of Churchill, taken at the Canadian Parliament in 1941, was one of several photographs Karsh gifted to the hotel when he died in 2002, including a 1948 portrait of Albert Einstein. The Roaring Lion photo, which appears on England’s £5 note, had hung for decades on a wall in a reading room.
It emerged this week that Jeffrey Wood, a 43-year-old from Powassan, Ont., with no criminal record, has been charged with the photograph’s theft, as well as other counts including forgery and trafficking in stolen property.
The purloined Karsh portrait was put up for sale at Sotheby’s, London, in May, 2022. Lot 28 had a list price of £5,000 ($8,900) to £7,000 ($12,500). It had passed security checks as the auction house was as yet unaware that a signed print of the Roaring Lion had been stolen.
Mr. Cassinelli, who described himself as a small-scale art collector, said he had no inkling of the photo’s dubious provenance when he made the winning £5,292 ($9,400) bid.
“When I won I thought I was only buying one of the several copies of the Roaring Lion. I wasn’t thinking I was buying a unique piece of history as it was discovered to be,” he said.
But a few months later Sotheby’s rang him and advised him not to sell it, informing him that a signed portrait of Churchill by Karsh had been stolen in Ottawa and there was a police inquiry. For around a year he heard nothing, presuming that his was not the stolen print. And then in 2023 the auction house called again and said evidence suggested he had accidentally purchased the lost Karsh, and asked him to call the Canadian police.
“For almost two years, I had a piece of history in my living room, even if I didn’t realize it at the time,” he said.
Mr. Cassinelli, a corporate lawyer, said he had bought the portrait in good faith and so, legally, was not obliged to return it. But he had no doubt that giving it back to Canada was the right thing to do, despite knowing that “my purchase title was absolutely effective.” The photo, taken after a wartime speech by Churchill to Canadian MPs, was, he said, “a piece of the history of Canada.”
After speaking to the Ottawa police, Mr. Cassinelli passed the print to the heritage division of Italy’s Carabinieri national police service, which launched further inquiries and confirmed it was indeed the stolen portrait.
He said he has been reimbursed for most of the cost of the portrait yet had suffered a “small financial loss,” declining to say how much he was out of pocket as the arrangement with Sotheby’s was confidential.
However, there was once again an empty space on the wall by his bookcase. Mr. Cassinelli went online and bought a replica Roaring Lion portrait which he has hung in the original’s place.
The lawyer plans to attend a ceremony next week at the Canadian embassy in Rome where the original will be handed over to Ottawa police and the Fairmont Château Laurier’s general manager, Geneviève Dumas. Mr. Cassinelli is already planning his trip to the Ottawa hotel.
“It would be nice for me to visit the hotel and to see it again,” he said. “I think it’s fair that it’s going back to its original home. That is the place where Mr. Karsh wanted it to stay.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the original Roaring Lion photograph was replaced with a forgery sometime between Christmas Day 2021 and Dec. 6, 2022. The theft occurred sometime between Christmas Day 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022. This version has been updated.