Visitors to Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum will soon have a chance to see two early paintings that for 15 years have only been seen by Italian mobsters.
The paintings are from Van Gogh’s early period, before he moved to Paris. They are “Seascape at Scheveningen,” painted in 1882, and “Congregation Leaving the Church at Nuenen,” painted two years later.
They were recently recovered by Italian police in a raid on the home of an infamous drug baron, Raffaele Imperiale, who is now believed to be in Dubai, where he owns a construction company.
They were stolen in December 2002 by thieves who bypassed the heavily-guarded museum’s security system by using a simple ladder to get to the roof, where they broke through a window and entered the building on a rope.
No official date is set for their return to the walls, but they are expected home from Italy in only days from now.
Photo: Museum and culture officials pose with the recovered paintings.
