At the 2013 Venice Biennale, Vietnamese artist Danh Vo exhibited a large wooden frame. It was all that remained of the canvas of the Nativity with St. Lawrence and St. Francis of Assisi by Caravaggio kept in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo until October 17, 1969, when it was stolen by unknown persons (apparently by Mafia). Since then, traces of the painting were lost, remaining to this day one of the most important and unsolved art thefts in history. The frame with the crossed wooden arms still bore clearly visible signs of the fixing nails and traces of the outer part of the stolen canvas. Taking a cue from Danh Vo's work, my paper wants to dwell not so much on what was there before 'loss' (theft, destruction, ruin), as on what remains after the end or mutilation of the 'cultural asset'. What is the aesthetic and semiotic status of 'remains', of 'relics'? How can they be resemantized beyond and beyond its relation to the lost, ruined or displaced object? Above all, though, I will try to investigate the relationship between the empty form of the frame, even in its dimension of hole and void, and the complex relationship between enunciation and utterance detectable within the definition of Cultural Heritage. An impersonal form of enunciation (Metz) and yet at the same time an extreme and liminal authorial trace (Eco), 'the rest' of cultural heritage becomes the inevitable origin of any re-reading and re-interpretation of the source space.