Cashing in on a Caravaggio

Today "Page Six" picks up on a bit of sensation in the art world: Salander-O'Reilly Galleries is pricing a piece by Italian Old Master Caravaggio featured in an upcoming show at $100 million. Here's what Larry Salander had to say:

"If people can justify paying $90 million for a new work by Damien Hirst, they should consider that these 400-year-old paintings are worth far more from an aesthetic point of view than anything from the contemporary field of junk, in which I think the emperor wears no clothes."

Maybe so! But what the Post fails to mention is that Salander is bogged down in more than a dozen lawsuits that accuse him of operating an "illegal Ponzi scheme" and failing to pay back rent, amongst other things. In court in April, Salander's lawyer, himself, reportedly said that the defendant "has a liquidity crisis, there's no question about it." Last week, Bloomberg investigated the situation here.

Just a public service announcement: It's always best to do a background check before cutting a multi-million dollar check.