ROME –
A special ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Rome marked the successful recovery of an iconic portrait of Winston Churchill after a two-year search by Ottawa police.
Canada’s Ambassador to Italy Elissa Goldberg hosted the event. The two primary Ottawa police detectives who investigated the heist were also present, along with the general manager of the Chateau Laurier, where the portrait was stolen, and Italian Carabinieri police who assisted in the international search.
At the ceremony, which lasted about a half hour, Italian police officially gave the portrait back to the Canadian ambassador. The handover was sealed with signatures.
The photograph, called “The Roaring Lion,” captures the former British prime minister glowering into the camera. Famed photographer Yousuf Karsh captured Churchill’s defiant look after plucking the former prime minister’s cigar from his mouth. Churchill sat for the portrait on Dec. 30, 1941, after giving a rousing wartime speech to the Canadian parliament.
The portrait is the most reproduced photograph of Churchill.
In 1998, Karsh and his wife Estrellita gifted an original signed print to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa.
The couple had lived and operated a studio inside the hotel for nearly two decades. The photo hung on the oak panelled wall of the hotel’s reading room.
However, shortly after Christmas 2021 during COVID lockdowns, the signed portrait was removed and replaced by a fake, which was then put in a cheaper frame before being hung back up.
The theft was discovered months later in August 2022 by a hotel maintenance worker. By that time, the original had been sold by Sotheby’s auction house in London, U.K., to a corporate lawyer in Genoa, Italy.
Sotheby’s did not know the photograph was stolen when it auctioned off “The Roaring Lion.”
General manager of Chateau Laurier Genevieve Dumas poses beside the Roaring Lion with Nicolas Cassinelli, the Italian lawyer who unknowingly purchased the stolen portrait. (Judy Trinh / CTV News)
The portrait was not listed in stolen art databases when buyer Nicola Cassinelli paid more than 5,000 pounds, or the equivalent of more than C$9,000, for the work in May 2022.
He said he did not know the actual famed portrait, which he called the equivalent of a photographic “Mona Lisa,” had been inside his home for nearly two years.
In the 32 months since the Churchill portrait was surreptitiously taken, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) underwent a global search using crowdsourcing to narrow down the time frame of the theft. OPS worked with both British and Italian authorities to track down the signed original which was hanging in Cassinelli’s living room.
The crime tore at the identity of the Chateau Laurier and in the initial stages, its staff, primarily maintenance worker Bruno Lair who discovered the theft, were considered suspects.
With the return of the photograph, the Chateau Laurier is made whole again.
But while details have emerged of how Ottawa police cracked the case, little is known about how the suspected thief was able to carry out his heist. Those questions won’t be answered in Italy but could be revealed in an Ottawa courtroom.
Jeffrey Wood, 43, of Powassan, Ont., faces 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, is forbidden from contacting hotel staff and must live with his sureties. He also cannot venture beyond 50 kilometres from his rural Ontario home, except for medical needs, to attend court or meet with his lawyers.