Following law enforcement investigations, which continue to be carried out, by the Carabinieri TPC, the altarpiece was removed from display at the Palazzo dei Diamanti just three days before the start of the exhibition, due to a "provision from the judicial authority for an ongoing investigation" according to Pietro Di Natale, director of the Ferrara Arte Foundation.  

In the exhibition's dossier, the missing painting is described as being the property of the Collezione Cavallini Sgarbi.  Unfortunately however, for the ex politician, his altarpiece is suspected to be an artwork which was stolen from a noble palace in 1984 belonging to journalist Paganello Spetia in Bevagna. 

In addition to this new suspect painting of Christ after his crucifixion, officers also are investigating the theft of a 1939 terracotta sculpture, titled Madre e Figlio, by Raffaele Consortini, an artist from Volterra, which had been in Sgarbi's possession for many years. 

As can be seen at the end of this video, Sgarbi displayed a sculpture, depicting a mother holding her infant child, during an exhibition titled Giotto and the Twentieth Century which ran from 5 December 2022 to 4 June 2023 at the Mart in Rovereto, another public museum presided over by the art critic.  In this instance, he indicated that the sculpture was the property of the Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi.  That said, this artwork too seems to be tied to another theft, as it apparently matches a sculpture reported as stolen twenty-seven years ago. 

In that instance the artwork was apparently taken from the burial chapel of the Nannipieri family, in Cascina, in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 60 kilometres west of Florence.  According to Antonio Nannipieri, a former judge of the Court of Appeal of Florence, the sculpture had been placed on the altar inside his family chapel by his mother shortly after the death of his son Lorenzo Nannipieri,  who died, along with his girlfriend, in an accident in 1987.  Ten years later, in 1997, the chapel was broken in to and the sculpture and two candelabras were stolen. 

In Judge Nannipieri's own words when informed that his son's sculpture was in Sgarbi's possession, he stated: “Maybe he didn’t know it was stolen, but a collector should check the provenance of the things he buys, especially if he then puts them in an exhibition.” 

Leaving aside for a moment that an art historian is more than an average collector, and is fully trained in how to research the origins of works of art, and leaving aside the fact that Sgarbi is now claiming that he too is an "injured party in the proceedings," this leads us to a second critical question, who Sgarbi got all these stolen works from in the first place. 

The Ames Stradivarius recovered by the F.B.I. in June. (Credit Federal Bureau of Investigation, via Associated Press)

Saratoga Herald-Tribune, Friday May 16, 1980, page 5-A.

Ms. Totenberg [Roman Totenberg’s daughter] said that the woman had inherited the violin from the man Ms. Totenberg’s father had suspected all along of stealing the instrument. The man had been seen in the vicinity of his office at Longy near the time of the theft, and a woman once visited Mr. Totenberg and told him that she believed that the man had stolen his violin. But to the family’s frustration, investigators at the time apparently did not believe that the tip was sufficient for them to obtain a search warrant.

“[The family are] going to make sure that it’s in the hands of another great artist who will play it in concert halls all over the world,” she said. “All of us feel very strongly that the voice has been stilled for too long.”