Rome –
A special ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Rome marked the safe recovery of an iconic portrait of Winston Churchill after a two-year search by Ottawa police.
Canada’s ambassador to Italy, Elissa Golberg, hosted the event, which was also attended by two of the lead Ottawa police detectives who investigated the robbery, the manager of the Chateau Laurier where the portrait was stolen, and the Italian Carabinieri, who assisted in the international search.
In a ceremony that lasted about 30 minutes, Italian police formally returned the portrait to the Canadian ambassador, who signed and stamped the document.
Titled “Roaring Lion,” the photo shows the former British Prime Minister glaring at the camera. Renowned photographer Yusuf Karsh captured Churchill’s defiant expression after removing the cigar from the former prime minister’s mouth. Churchill had the portrait taken after delivering an impassioned wartime speech to the Canadian Parliament on December 30, 1941.
The portrait is the most reproduced photograph of Churchill.
In 1998, Karsh and his wife, Estrellita, donated the original, signed print to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa.
The couple lived and ran a studio in the hotel for nearly 20 years, and the photographs hang on the oak walls of the hotel’s reading room.
However, during the COVID-19 lockdown just after Christmas 2021, the signed portrait was removed and replaced with a fake, then rehung in a cheaper frame.
The theft was discovered several months later, in August 2022, by a hotel maintenance worker, at which point the original had been sold by auction house Sotheby’s in London, England, to a corporate lawyer in Genoa, Italy.
When Sotheby’s auctioned “Roaring Lion,” they had no idea the painting had been stolen.
Chateau Laurier general manager Genevieve Dumas poses next to a roaring lion with Italian lawyer Nicholas Cassinelli, who unknowingly purchased the stolen portrait. (Judy Trinh/CTV News)
The portrait was not listed in the stolen art database at the time the buyer, Nicola Cassinelli, paid more than £5,000, or the equivalent of more than $9,000 Canadian, for the work in May 2022.
He said he was unaware that the famous portrait, which he describes as the photographic equivalent of the Mona Lisa, had been kept in his home for nearly two years.
In the 32 months since the Churchill portrait was stolen, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) conducted a crowdsourced, global search to narrow down the timeline of the theft, and worked with authorities in both the UK and Italy to track down the signed original that hung in Cassinelli’s living room.
The crime has shaken the identity of Chateau Laurier and initially Chateau Laurier staff were suspects, particularly Bruno Rea, the maintenance worker who discovered the theft.
With the return of the photographs, Chateau Laurier is back on track.
But while details of how Ottawa police solved the case are now known, little is known about how the suspect was able to carry out the robbery. These are questions that will likely go unanswered in Italy, but may be answered in an Ottawa courtroom.
Jeffrey Wood, 43, of Powassan, Ontario, is facing multiple charges including theft over $5,000, forgery and trafficking in stolen property. As part of his bail conditions, he must wear a GPS ankle monitor, be prohibited from contacting hotel staff, live with his surety and cannot travel more than 50 kilometres from his rural Ontario home except for medical needs, court appearances and meetings with his lawyer.
