ROME – The head of the Sicilian Mafia, Bernardo Provenzano, nicknamed “The Tractor” for the way he once mowed down his rivals, was arrested without a struggle yesterday after 42 years on the run.

The 73 year old was found in a small farmhouse near his hometown, Corleone. At first he denied being the world’s most wanted Mafia fugitive. But after an on-the-spot DNA test, he confessed: “Yes, it’s true, I am Bernado Provenzano.”

He was then flown to a court in Palermo, where a crowd screamed: “Bastard. Murderer.” Mr. Provenzano, wearing a windbreaker and tinted glasses, made no audible comment.

He was a good deal changed from the photograph on his wanted poster and the only picture of him in circulation until yesterday – one of the reasons for his success in eluding capture.

An assertion in a recent film that he had been in the Corleone area all the time, protected by the omerta code of silence and possibly friends in high places, was proved correct. He may have left only once: for a clandestine prostate operation in the south of France three years ago.

His arrest, on the day Silvio Berlusconi lost power, provoked a storm of speculation across Italy.

Some people suggested his capture was a signal that his protection by the establishment was at an end. Others saw the arrest as an attempt to improve the standing of the outgoing interior minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, a possible leader of the opposition.

Police said they tracked Mr. Provenzano down through a trail of pizzini – typed messages on bits of paper through which he controlled the Mafia’s multibillion-pound empire. They also shadowed the henchmen who took food to the building in the final days. A typewriter was taken away from the farmhouse. Giovanni Marino, a shepherd who owns the building, was also arrested.

“It is a very positive move, even though Provenzano is no longer the operative head of Cosa Nostra, more a ‘noble godfather’,” the speaker of the lower house and a former anti-Mafia prosecutor, Luciano Violante, said.

“Now we may be able to tell who protected him for all these years.”

Mr. Provenzano, the subject of the Godfather novel and films, had been on the run since 1963 after being involved in the killing of a rival, Michele Navarra. He became no. 2 to Toto “The Beast” Riina and they presided over hundreds of killings in the 1980s. Mr. Provenzano was sentenced to life in jail in absentia for a string of crimes, including the 1992 murder of anti-Mafia magistrates.

After Riina’s arrest in 1993, he became the godfather and is believed to have stamped out the gang warfare he had once excelled at, allowing Cosa Nostra to get on with making money. Another of his nicknames is “The Accountant.”