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AFP / Getty
Seven masterpieces, including Picasso's harlequin head, were stolen during a robbery preceding dawn in 2012
What we thought was a stolen work by Pablo Picasso recently discovered in Romania was revealed as a fake.
The experts had hoped that the painting was Harlequin Head, taken to the Kunsthal Museum Rotterdam in an infamous art flight six years ago.
A Belgian theater troupe duped a Dutch writer, who wrote a novel based on this daring robbery, making him believe that she had regained the missing work of art in Romania.
He says that he organized the hoax as part of a project on the value of truth.
The flight of the century, as the 2012 flight was dubbed by local media, saw pieces of Picasso, Monet, Matisse and others taken in three minutes.
Four Romanian art thieves were jailed for the robbery, but the seven works of art – estimated at a value of up to 200 million euros at the time – did not Have never been found.
It is feared that some of the rooms were burned by one of the thief's mothers, who told the local media that she had cremated the paintings after police began searching her village. She then went back on her confession.
The Romanian authorities received a canvas Saturday night, thinking that it could work from Picasso's painting, estimated at 800,000 euros.
The Dutch writer Mira Feticu had unearthed an art work wrapped in plastic in a Romanian forest, after receiving an anonymous letter about 10 days ago.
On Sunday however, Ms. Feticu, of Romanian origin, told the AFP news agency that the release "with instructions regarding where the painting was hidden" was a "publicity stunt".
She told the Dutch public broadcaster NOS that she had been duped as part of a "performance" by two Belgian directors who had sent an email explaining that this letter was part of a project entitled True Copy, dedicated to the infamous Dutch counterfeiter Geert Jan Jansen.
The master forger spent decades making fake paintings and reselling them as Picassos, Klimts and Appels Originals before being caught in 1994.
The production company said on its website that she would not make any other comments at the moment.
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