Van Gogh paintings recovered in Italy
ROME — Police investigating suspected Italian mobsters for cocaine trafficking discovered two Van Gogh paintings hidden in a farmhouse near Naples, masterpieces that had vanished in 2002 during a nighttime heist at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, authorities said Friday.
The two paintings were “considered among the artworks most searched for in the world, on the FBI’s list of the top 10 art crimes,” Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said.
They were found in a farmhouse near Castellammare di Stabia as Italian police seized some 20 million euros ($22 million US) worth of assets, including farmland, villas and apartments and a small airplane. Investigators contend those assets are linked to two Camorra drug kingpins, Mario Cerrone and Raffaele Imperiale, according prosecutors Giovanni Colangelo and Filippo Beatrice.
The recovered masterpieces, propped up on easels, were unveiled for reporters Friday in Naples. Museum director Axel Rueger said Italian investigators contacted the museum earlier in the week and art experts determined the paintings were authentic.
“Needless to say, it’s a great day for us today,” Rueger told Sky TG24 TV. “We hope they are soon back where they belong.”
With their frames removed and covered by cloths, the paintings appeared to be in relatively good condition despite their long odyssey, the museum said.
One of the paintings, the 1882 “Seascape at Scheveningen,” is one of Vincent Van Gogh’s first major works. It depicts a boat setting off into a stormy sea, and the thick paint trapped grains of sand that blew up from the Dutch beach as Van Gogh worked on it over two days.
The other is an 1884-85 work, “Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen,” which depicts a church in the southern Netherlands where the artist’s father was the pastor. Experts believe it was done for Van Gogh’s mother.
Despite the wishes of the museum, the paintings are not leaving Italy any time soon. They are evidence in an investigation of whether gangsters from the Camorra crime syndicate were behind the original theft or might have become involved with the artworks later.
The Camorra is one of Italy’s three largest organized crime syndicates, with the Calabria-based ’Ndrangheta the most powerful. The Camorra consists of many crime clans, based in Naples as well as many of the Campania region’s small towns.
Financial Police Col. Giovanni Salerno said investigators looking into the syndicate’s cocaine trafficking operations got a tip that the Camorra might have the Van Gogh artworks.