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 Italian investigators displayed the recovered artworks - a
sea scene and a church where the painter's father was minister -
to reporters in Naples, saying each was worth an estimated 50
million euros ($56 million).
"It is a great day for us today to see the works and to know
that they are safe and that they are in safe hands," said Axel
Ruger, director of Amsterdam's Van Gogh museum, who was present
when the paintings were shown to reporters.
"We may have to be a bit patient, but we hope that we will have
them soon back where they belong," he said, adding the museum
would respect Italian legal procedures.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi informed his Dutch
counterpart Mark Rutte about the police operation before the
funeral in Jerusalem of former Israeli leader Shimon Peres, a
source in Renzi's office said.
The paintings were found wrapped in cloth inside a safe in a
country house south of Naples that prosecutors said belonged to
Raffaele Imperiale, a 41-year-old businessman accused in January
of running an international cocaine trafficking ring together
with high-ranking mobsters from a clan made famous in the 2008
film "Gomorra".
Imperiale is a fugitive and Italian investigators suspect he is
living and running a construction business in Dubai. But the
arrests of 11 members of his alleged ring in January, including
one man who turned state's witness, led investigators to the
paintings.
Along with the artworks, which Naples prosecutor Giovanni
Colangelo said were probably purchased with drug proceeds,
police seized a small airplane, boats, 49 properties, and 88
bank accounts worth some 20 million euros.
AUTHENTIC
The paintings vanished in 2002 after a heist in which thieves
used a ladder to climb onto the Van Gogh Museum's roof and break
into the building. They escaped by sliding down a rope in a
robbery considered by the U.S. FBI as one of the top ten global
art crimes.
Two men were later caught and convicted of the theft thanks in
part to DNA evidence linking them to the scene. They were
sentenced to 4 years and 4 years, six months, respectively, but
the paintings were not recovered.
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Colangelo said the artworks were found "a few days ago", and Italian
and Dutch experts were called in to authenticate whether they were
indeed the stolen works.
"The paintings are definitely authentic," Colangelo said.
The recovered works, "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in
Nuenen" (1884/5) and "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" (1882), are
both from relatively early in Van Gogh's short, tempestuous career.
The Van Gogh Museum said the paintings had been removed from their
frames, but appear to have suffered only slight damage.
The Scheveningen painting is one of only two sea scenes Van Gogh
painted in the Netherlands, and "an important example of Van Gogh's
earliest painting style, in which he already appeared rather
unique", the museum said.
The museum said on Friday a patch of paint in the lower left corner
had been chipped off.
The painting of the Nuenen congregation where Van Gogh's father
worked as minister was made for his mother and finished after his
father's death in 1885. It appears undamaged, but further
investigation is needed to determine both paintings' exact condition
and restoration needs, the museum said.
($1 = 0.8953 euros)
(Additional reporting by Amalia De Simone in Naples; Editing by Toby
Chopra)
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