It must have seemed like the artistic find of the decade — a Picasso looted from Kuwait when Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded in 1990 and found in southern Iraq when someone tried to sell it for a handsome sum. The canvas even said “Picasso” on it.

Security officials who showed off the painting, The Naked Woman, said yesterday that it went missing from the al-Ahmadi Hall of the Kuwait National Museum after the Iraqi invasion that started the Gulf War. The son of a former soldier in al-Hillah, 60 miles (100km) south of Baghdad, had tried to sell it recently, asking for half a million dollars or more. The art market value, they claimed, was closer to $10 million (£6.2 million).

There was widespread looting after Iraqi troops flooded into Kuwait City in August 1990. Baghdad street markets filled with second-hand cars, televisions and antiques.

Here was proof of Iraq’s success in tracking down some of that loot. When the art world took a closer look, however, doubts began to emerge. Was it the strange proportions? Was it the tag on the back that read “the Louvre; to the museum of Kuwait”, even though the Louvre has never had a Picasso in its collection and would not, a spokesman said, have sold one if it did?

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Or was it that, in the words of an expert, “it bears absolutely no relation to any Picasso that I can think of”?

The reality took the gloss off what was otherwise a brilliant operation. The would-be seller, 33, was given it by his father just before he died. He was said to have asked for a “down payment” of $450,000.

A security official told The Times: “The painting was originally inside a house but we didn’t like the idea of a raid because we feared the suspect might burn the painting. An ambush was set up outside and he was lured into the city, where he was arrested in the middle of the road.”

Time and adventure had not been kind to the painting. It was folded rather than rolled and seemed to have been cut out of its frame. “The painting was slightly damaged as he had folded it at least four times,” the security official said.

To this day the Iraqi looting of two decades ago is a painful issue for Kuwaitis. Baghdad residents said that after Saddam was overthrown in 2003 Kuwaitis drove to the capital to loot buildings in revenge.

When Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait, Saddam’s regime promised to return its booty of airliners, gold and art, even requesting the help of the UN. Much of the spoils ended up in private hands and when the Kurds and Shias rose against Saddam, the question of loot fell off the agenda. The Iraqi Government of today has been keen to mend fences with its neighbour by being more zealous in the pursuit of the treasures.

In this case it may have been overzealous. The Art Loss Register in London said that it had no record of paintings missing from the Kuwait National Museum and no record of this painting as missing at all. The Picasso Museum in Paris and the French national museum were searching their archives for the painting.

John Richardson, the author of A Life of Picasso, said: “Picasso did all kinds of funny things when he was a child but they don’t look like this. In his youth he did paint a number of academic nudes but they are completely different in character and style. It just doesn’t look like him in any single respect.”

The painting will be examined in Baghdad. The security official hinted that the Prime Minister’s office had more information on looted artwork and could swoop again soon.

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