Italian police yesterday recovered three Post-Impressionist masterpieces stolen from Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art and arrested eight people suspected of involvement in the theft. The works, two by Vincent Van Gogh and one by Paul Cezanne, were found during night-time raids on apartments in Rome and Turin.
"Three works that are an important part of the cultural patrimony of humanity have been recovered," a beaming Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Walter Veltroni, told a packed press conference in Rome. "A wound that was opened 48 days ago has now been closed."
Mr Veltroni said those responsible for the theft were part of a well-organised and heavily armed criminal gang. Two of those arrested were women, one of them employed as a security guard at the gallery.
The paintings were stolen in an armed raid on the Rome gallery on May 19th. The robbers had waited in the gallery until after closing time and then crept up on the guards in stockinged feet. They had chosen a route that avoided electronic security beams - giving rise to the suspicion that they had an accomplice among the gallery staff. They made off with Van Gogh's paintings The Gardener and The Woman of Arles as well as an unfinished oil-painting by Cezanne, Jourdan's Cottage.
Gen Roberto Conforti, head of the Carabinieri police unit set up to combat art thefts, said investigators had begun their inquiry by concentrating on the 160 staff employed by the gallery. They had discovered that some of them were in contact with a group of known criminals. Two of the suspects had been in prison in Belgium for armed robbery and murder, and the Belgian police provided crucial assistance to the Italian investigation.
The Woman of Arles, Van Gogh's portrait of the woman who nursed him through a period of depression shortly before his suicide, was recovered in a flat in Turin. Also in the flat were pistols, shotguns, a submachine-gun, masks, wigs and bomb-making materials.
At the time of the robbery, Mr Veltroni voiced the suspicion that there may have been a desire to embarrass the government behind the anomalous and spectacular crime.
Magistrates co-ordinating the inquiry said the next stage would seek to clarify the background to the theft and the gang's attempts to sell the paintings. "For the moment we have no evidence that would indicate a political dimension to the robbery," Gen Conforti said.
Mr Veltroni promised that the paintings, on display at the jubilant Rome press conference, would be back in the National Gallery of Modern Art from today.