Painting found by junk dealer in cellar is original Picasso, experts claim

Portrait hung in cheap frame for decades, with wife describing it as ‘horrible’ and family mulling getting rid of it

A painting that was found by a junk dealer while he was clearing out the cellar of a home in Capri, and was regularly decried by his wife as “horrible”, is an original portrait by Pablo Picasso, Italian experts have claimed.

After he stumbled across the painting in 1962, Luigi Lo Rosso took the rolled-up canvas home with him to Pompeii, where it hung in a cheap frame on the living room wall for the next few decades.