When Nicola Cassinelli, Italian lawyer and occasional art collector, bid on a portrait of the late U.K. prime minister Winston Churchill, he says, he didn’t know it would land him in the centre of an international criminal investigation.
The image depicts a glowering Churchill posing after his prolific 1941 speech in Canadian Parliament. It captures the wartime leader in the moments after local photographer Yousuf Karsh snatched a cigar out of his hand. When Karsh returned to his camera, he saw a Churchill who “looked so belligerent he could have devoured me.”
Karsh snapped the picture, titled “The Roaring Lion,” which has arguably become the most famous image of Churchill in history. It is also one of the most reproduced pictures of the 20th century, making an appearance on the U.K. five-pound note.
The stolen lion
Eight decades later, in May 2022, 38-year-old corporate lawyer Cassinelli was browsing art auctions online. He saw “The Roaring Lion” up for sale for about 5,200 pounds, or just over C$9,000.
“I thought I was bidding for one of the several copies,” he said in an interview with CTV News. “A few months later, I discovered that I bought not a simple copy, but that copy.”
“That” copy had, until months prior, been hanging on the wall of Ottawa’s prestigious Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel, where the iconic photograph had been taken and where Karsh had lived for 18 years. He later gifted the portrait to the Chateau Laurier.
The hotel was also the scene of a crime. In August 2022, a maintenance worker, Bruno Lair, was making his rounds through the Chateau Laurier when he noticed that “The Roaring Lion” was crooked.
More than that, it appeared smaller. And it was in a frame without locks, hung with a wire. “Those pictures are not hung by a wire,” he later told CTV News.
“The Roaring Lion” on that wall was a fake. The real one had been stolen.
He alerted his boss and set in motion a police investigation that would last two years, cross oceans and eventually lead to a phone call to Cassinelli.
‘The Mona Lisa in your living room’
“I received a phone call from the auction house telling me not to sell or transfer the artwork,” he said, referring to the portrait now hanging in his living room.
He Googled the portrait and saw headlines that the famous Chateau Laurier version was missing. CTV News reported at the time that the switcheroo had prompted the hotel to lock up all its other portraits in storage.
Months went by as police continued their investigation, gradually narrowing in on Cassinelli’s copy. Eventually, he got another call confirming the news.
“At that moment, I realized it was like having the Mona Lisa in your living room,” he recalled. “It’s a mythical photograph.”
Cassinelli was not ignorant to the image’s significance. Having studied Churchill, he says he knew that edition of the portrait was of great historical importance – not just to the prime minister’s legacy, but to Canada.
In a world of copies, his portrait was “a real piece of history. A real piece of art.”
On the request of the hotel and authorities, he agreed to return the picture. It’s now with police until a repatriation ceremony in Ottawa is held next week. Cassinelli will attend.
On the day he dropped it off, he says, he bought another “Roaring Lion” – a simple poster version – for about $50 and hung it in the spot left vacant by the hotel’s edition.
“That is a copy, but the original was once there, and that is incredible,” he said. “I have a story to tell all my life.”