In December 2018 Alejandro Corral, president of the Realejo neighbourhood association alerted the Environmental Prosecutor's Office of Madrid of a new attempt to sell stolen religious works of art from the church of convent Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles in the Realejo neighborhood of Granada.  In making his denouncement, Corral told the authorities that a17th century religious statue depicting Santa Rosa di Viterbo, by Baroque sculptor José de Mora, had been spotted in circulation on the religious art market, intentionally or unintentionally, labelled as Saint Margaret of Cortona in a catalogue titled "Seven Centuries of Spanish Art".  

This notice, in turn, triggered an investigation by Spain's Ministry of Culture and the Heritage Brigade of the Policía Nacional, code named Operación Granada.   Shortly thereafter, a social media outcry lead to researchers publicly naming the seller as Madrid-based art dealer Nicolás Cortés, who had included the statue in his gallery's Maastricht and New York sales offerings at TEFAF for €350,000.  

During the Spanish investigation, the National Police seized the 17th-century religious statue while still in the possession of Cortés, which effectively barred its sale onward, giving investigators time to clarify the statue's ownership and exportation details.

Interviewed by El Pais shortly after the news broke, dealer Nicolás Cortés told news services that he had bought the sculpture at the end of 2017 from an antique dealer for €100,000, stating he was told it came from a private collector.  These details were later determined to contain discrepancies.   Cortés is also quoted as saying “I wouldn’t think of going to a convent to buy because it’s illegal,”  and turned over the purchase invoice and the relevant export permit to the Spanish authorities conducting their investigation. 

Sister Josefa, the mother superior of the convent Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles, initially claimed that the statue listed for sale by Cortés was different from the one in her order's church, citing the positioning of the left hand.  She also insisted that the convent still possessed its statue,  though admittedly, she initially declined to reveal its location. "There was never an image with that title in the convent," she told El País, suggesting the one for sale with the Madrid dealer as Saint Margaret of Cortona had simply been mistaken for the statue of Santa Rosa di Viterbo. 

Despite this, it was quickly determined that the statue in the religious order's possession was a crudely made modern fake, as can be seen in the image below.

Professor of history at the University of Granada, Lázaro Gila, who has also documented all the convents of Granada, told El País that he had no doubt that the figure for sale with Cortés' gallery was the Santa Rosa di Viterbo stolen from the church, adding that the artist de Mora did not produce the same sculpture twice.

Likewise, conservation experts were also convinced that the object for sale by the gallery was the stolen sculpture, given that the folds and design details of the mantle are quite specific and could not have been altered without risk of damage to the original polychromy.  The conservators also noted that the positioning of the hands could have been easily altered and that the Cortés’s gallery itself confirmed that the statue's left hand had been readjusted.

In December 2019, Spanish investigators determined that Alagón antique dealer Santos Boy Jimenez Borja had taken the 1.5 meters high, 17th century statue depicting Santa Rosa di Viterbo, which had been displayed above the church's altar, shortly after the convent's closure and around the same time other religious art objects from the closed convent began to appear on the Spanish market.  The object was purportedly removed, according to the religious order, on the pretext of obtaining an estimate for restoring it, only to have a replacement returned in its stead, commissioned to vaguely represent the polychrome saint. 

Jimenez Borja then sold the statuette to Cortés for an agreed value of 90,000 euros in June 2018,  not in 2017 and not for the 100,000 euros as stated by the Madrid art dealer.  Equally unusual, to conclude thir sales transaction Jimenez Borja is purported to have received "45,000 euros through a transfer and a BMW X5 valued at the same price, although there were doubts about whether it was possible to export the piece given its religious origin."  So not exactly your routine sales transaction. 

This week, the Court of Granada sentenced Jimenez Borja to four years in prison and handed him a fine of 3,650 euros for misappropriation of the eighteenth-century sculpture.   Despite his conviction, he still insists on his innocence, claiming he purchased the statuette directly from the religious order and reminding the Spanish news that he is not a restorer which makes the statements about removing the statue for a conservation estimate somewhat clouded. 

One we do know, is that cases like this one highlight the importance of precise record keeping and how a slight name change can allow stolen material to circulate.  A Spanish export license was issued for this religious object despite the fact that the statue had been clearly listed in the registry of the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage, in charge of the protection and research on the historical heritage of Andalusia.   

Unfortunately, there the religious statuette is listed under the name Santa Rosa de Viterbo, not the name given on the export request, and registered as being in Sevilla, in the Municipality of Estepa at the Monasterio de Santa Clara de Jesús / Convento de Santa Clara.  Luckily the eyes of citizen activists played an important part in this artworks eventual recovery.