Madonna with Cat

When an Italian nobleman produced a painting that appeared to be Leonardo Da Vinci's "Madonna with Cat" (long rumored to exist) experts hailed it as a masterpiece and made it the centerpiece of a 1939 exhibit about Da Vinci in Milan. But after the show ended, the painting mysteriously disappeared, and it only resurfaced in 1990 when Cesare Tubino, a Turin painter, died and it was found hanging in his bedroom. In his will, Tubino explained that he had painted the "Madonna with Cat" and not Da Vinci. Italy's fascist government had banned Tubino from exhibiting his own work. So this had been his way of fooling the experts and secretly displaying his work.