A Milan notary’s office receives an assignment from a private Swiss bank to track down the heirs of Giovanni Janowitz. Nathan Giannotti thus discovers that he is the sole heir of his grandfather, who before dying in Auschwitz had opened a safe-deposit box in Switzerland. Inside, Nathan finds only a receipt dated “Florence, 1938.” It certifies an “exchange” between a Canaletto painting and an Otto Dix of mysterious provenance.
That document proves that Nathan’s family was subjected to a forced sale; specialists in the recovery of looted artworks are therefore needed. A Canaletto, wherever it has been, leaves indelible traces and has done so for more than two hundred years.
Thus begins a race through beautiful and little-known places, an extraordinary pursuit similar to many that took place after the Second World War that allows for an exploration of surprising fragments of twentieth-century history. As the investigation unfolds, the story of an unknown man emerges and fades, a man whose true identity became public only in 2013, after more than sixty years of impenetrable darkness.
Two narrative threads, inevitably destined to intertwine.