It was in this space, on October 17, that Salander was scheduled to open perhaps his most impressive show. Titled “Masterpieces of Art: Five Centuries of Painting and Sculpture,” the exhibition was to feature a breathtaking array of old-master works, including pictures by Rubens, El Greco, Titian, Botticelli, and, most eagerly anticipated in the art press, an astounding four works by Caravaggio. If Salander was having financial problems, the upcoming show should have eased his worries; as he let it be known, he was anticipating sales of close to $500 million from the exhibition. Indeed, the centerpiece of the show—Apollo the Lute Player, recently reattributed to Caravaggio—was to go on sale for $100 million.

Yet as the date approached, Salander seemed to grow only more tense. Sometime in August, after trying for months to find out what had happened to 18 of his paintings that had been lent to a gallery in Rome, the artist Paul Resika spoke to Salander on the phone and was shocked when the dealer lashed out, accusing Resika of having betrayed him and their 20-year friendship because Resika had spoken to Robert De Niro about several paintings by the actor’s father that, like Resika’s works, also had not been returned after an exhibition at the Italian gallery. Not until the third week of October would Resika, De Niro, and other friends finally discover what had been bothering Salander.

People had already begun to line up outside for the opening of “Masterpieces of Art” late on the afternoon of October 17 when it was announced that the show had been canceled. Two days later, the art world was shocked when the Salander-O’Reilly gallery was closed and its doors padlocked as a result of an order by a New York State Supreme Court judge, ruling in two of what would soon turn out to be more than 40 lawsuits filed by wealthy art collectors, Wall Street financiers, artists’ estates, and galleries in Europe and the United States accusing Larry Salander of a stunning array of misdeeds, including theft, fraud, and forgery.

Among those who sued was Roy Lennox, the senior managing director of the $11 billion hedge fund Caxton Associates, who alleged that Salander owed him $3.8 million for a series of art investments that Lennox would call “nothing more than an illegal Ponzi scheme.” Saundra Lane, a Massachusetts art collector, claimed that Salander had not made $3.4 million in payments for a Charles Sheeler painting he had purchased from her and that some of the collateral he had given her in return—two Albert Pinkham Ryders and two James McNeill Whistlers—were possibly fakes. Earl Davis amended his suit against Salander, claiming after an investigation that the dealer owed him more than $30 million for 96 works by his father that Salander had either lost or sold without Davis’ permission. Myron Kunin, the billionaire founder of the hair-care conglomerate Regis and a noted collector of works by American Modernists, sued, claiming that Salander owed $3.8 million in unpaid loans and $3.5 million for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting that Salander had not fully paid for. The contractor who had renovated Salander’s East Side townhouse sued, as did the landlord of his old gallery on East 79th Street, the landlord for his new gallery, as well as Bank of America and Sotheby’s. The most damaging suit, however—the one that resulted in the shuttering of Salander’s gallery—was filed by Donald Schupak, the chairman of Triumph Apparel, who alleged that Salander had “swindled” about $42 million worth of Baroque and Renaissance art from Renaissance Art Investors, a partnership the two men had formed in the spring of 2006. In early November, telling the court that Schupak’s allegations in particular were “false” and that he believed he had “extremely valuable personal assets and holdings that, if sold in the proper manner, should be sufficient to satisfy all legitimate claims,” Salander and his wife, Julie, filed for personal bankruptcy. The gallery followed suit—at which point yet more claims surfaced, most notably from Salander’s lead creditor, the San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, whose lawyers would tell the bankruptcy court that Salander was in default on more than $40 million in loans.