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		</div><p>Italian police have recovered a 500-year-old copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century Salvator Mundi painting of Jesus Christ that was stolen from a Naples church during the pandemic without the priests even realising it was gone.</p>
<p>The discovery was made when Naples police working on a bigger operation found the painting hidden in an apartment.</p>
<p>Police chief Alfredo Fabbrocini said the apartment owner was detained after he offered a “less than credible” explanation that he had “casually” bought it at a market.</p>
<p>The painting is a copy of the Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) by Leonardo that sold for a record 450 million dollars (£330m) at a Christie’s auction in 2017.</p>
<p>The unnamed bidder was later identified as a Saudi royal who purportedly purchased it on behalf of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.</p>
<p>It was supposed to have been unveiled a year later at the museum, but the exhibition was delayed indefinitely and the work has not been seen in public since.</p>
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<p>The copy, attributed to the Leonardo school but not the Renaissance artist himself, had been housed in a small museum in a side chapel of the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, which had been closed during the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>Mr Fabbrocini said the discovery was particularly satisfying “because we resolved a case before it was created”.</p>
<p>He explained: “The painting was found but its custodian had not realised it was stolen.”</p>
<p>The painting depicts a robed Jesus holding a crystal orb and gazing directly at the viewer.</p>
<p>The San Domenico basilica says the painting was probably made by a Leonardo student in the 1520s and purchased by Giovan Antonio Muscettola, an adviser to Emperor Charles V and ambassador to the papal court. It was housed in the basilica’s Muscettola family chapel.</p>
<p>It was restored prior to being exhibited in a 1983-1984 show “Leonardo and Leonardism in Naples and Rome”.</p>
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