The Matisse swapped for a copy in Caracas

On 17 July 2012, in a hotel in Miami Beach, two people unrolled a canvas for two men they took to be buyers. The men were undercover FBI agents. The canvas was Odalisque in Red Trousers, painted by Henri Matisse in 1925. The day before, Maria Martha Elisa Ornelas Lazo, of Mexico City, had flown to Miami with it in a red tube. The agents judged it consistent with the Matisse missing from Venezuela. They arrested Ornelas and Pedro Antonio Marcuello Guzman, of Miami. The FBI says Marcuello had agreed to sell the painting for about 740,000 dollars and told the agents he knew it was stolen.

The painting belonged to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas, which was later named for its founder, Sofia Imber. The museum bought it in 1981 from the Marlborough Gallery in New York. Sources give the price as 400,000 or 480,000 dollars. The FBI and the press put its value at about 3 million dollars. That figure is an estimate, not a sale price.

The original was taken out and a copy was put in its frame, so the museum went on showing a fake. Nobody knows when. The BBC puts the swap between 1999 and 2002, and the Guardian, citing AP, says 2000. The FBI says it was stolen in or around December 2002. The journalist Marianela Balbi, who wrote a book on the case, told the New York Times that a September 2000 photograph of President Chavez in front of the copy is the earliest sign. A 2001 inventory counted 14 missing works but did not detect the fake, according to the former director, Rita Salvestrini, quoted by the Times.

The discovery is also disputed. The Times, BBC Mundo and Artnet say the museum learned of it in late 2002. A Miami dealer, Genaro Ambrosino, was offered the painting and warned the art world, and the museum then had to admit that its picture was a copy. The BBC and AFP say 2003. Artnet, citing Reuters and Balbi, reports that the copy was acrylic, not oil, and had eight green stripes where the original has seven.

Between the swap and the sting, the canvas is said to have passed through New York, Paris and Mexico, with attempts to sell it. This comes from Balbi’s research and Reuters. Only the storage in Mexico is in the court record. The Times, citing court papers, reports that Ornelas told agents that museum employees had stolen it. That is a defendant’s statement. It has not been proved.

On 30 October 2012 both pleaded guilty. Marcuello admitted conspiracy to transport and sell stolen property, interstate transport of stolen property and possession of stolen property. Ornelas admitted conspiracy. On 22 January 2013 Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, of the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, sentenced Marcuello to 33 months in prison and Ornelas to 21 months, each followed by three years of supervised release. These convictions concern the 2012 sale only. Reuters reported in October 2014 that no one had been charged with the original theft or the swap.

After a court in south Florida authorised its release, the painting reached Maiquetia airport in Caracas, on 7 July 2014. Officials said it was generally well preserved. In October 2014 the museum showed the original beside the copy, with a video comparing them. Balbi objected that this gave standing to an object of a crime. The latest source consulted, Reuters on 28 October 2014, places the painting at the museum. It says nothing of later display.