Secret workshop where Picassos and Rembrandts were forged found in Rome

A clandestine workshop has been discovered in Rome where fakes of paintings by some of the world’s most famous artists, including Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt, were produced before being sold online.

The discovery was made in a house in a district in the north of the city by a team from Rome’s public prosecutors’ office and the forgeries unit of Italy’s art squad, which said in a statement that they have gathered “important evidence” to suggest that an art restorer was at the centre of the racket.

Police seized 71 paintings, some completed and others half-finished, that were found inside the small workshop, alongside a plethora of painting materials, including hundreds of tubes of paints, brushes, stencils and canvases of various sizes as well as art catalogues that the fraudsters used to sell the works. They also forged certificates to guarantee “authenticity”, police said.

The investigation began after police monitored sales sites online and came across hundreds of paintings of dubious quality bearing the signatures of painters who were active in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Other artists whose work was forged include Mario Puccini, Giacomo Balla and the Belgian painter Anna De Weert. It is unclear how long the scam had been going on for and how much the fraudsters profited.

A few months ago, Italian police

dismantled a Europe-wide forgery network

The 38 suspects made agreements with various Italian auction houses for the sale of the forged works and even organised two Banksy exhibitions with a published catalogue in prestigious locations in Mestre, near Venice, and Cortona in Tuscany.