The Caravaggio painting Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence is stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

The Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence is a painting of the nativity of Jesus from 1609 by Italian painter Caravaggio. It has been missing since 1969 when it was stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. Investigators believe the painting changed hands among the Sicilian Mafia in the decades following the robbery and may still be hidden. A replica was commissioned in 2015 and now hangs in the altar.

The Oratory of Saint Lawrence is a Baroque oratory of Palermo. It is located near the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, in the quarter of the Kalsa, within the historic centre of Palermo.

Palermo is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Palermo is in the northwest of the island of Sicily, by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea.