Schifani’s Madonna of the Prisoners

02 May 2026

by Giuseppe Frangi A large canvas with a crowned Madonna in the center, against the background of a swirling blue sky. It is a work that no one knew about, also because it was kept in an unexpected place: the prison in Frosinone, named after the prison officer Giuseppe Pagliei, murdered on 8 November 1978 by a group of terrorists. The person who painted it is one of the most important and beloved Italian artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Mario Schifano, a character with a very restless life who had experienced detention. On 18 December 1982 he was caught at the Autogrill La Macchia Sud on the Rome-Naples route, with 33 grams of pure heroin in plain sight on the dashboard of the car. For this reason they had locked him up in the Frosinone prison, which at the time was an old building in the heart …