Pegasus Research Consortium

Two Stolen Paintings Are Found in Italy

Why is this under 'treasure'?

Well because the guy who had them didn't steal them  :D

(http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/03/arts/sub03PAINTINGS/sub03PAINTINGS-master675.jpg)
In Rome, Italy's culture minister, Dario Franceschini, unveiled a still life by Gauguin that had been taken in London in 1970. Credit Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

QuoteIn 1975, a factory worker at Fiat, the Italian carmaker, bought two colorful paintings for about $70 at an auction in Turin of objects left unclaimed by train passengers. For years, they hung on his kitchen wall. One was a still life with fruit and a small dog, the other showed a woman in white seated in a verdant garden.

Then, last summer, the man's son, an architecture student, was looking through a book of paintings by Paul Gauguin and saw a familiar image: a still life with a dog. The family called in experts, who contacted the Italian police. On Wednesday, the police said that the paintings were, in fact, a still life by Gauguin from 1889 and "Woman With Two Chairs" by Pierre Bonnard, both of which had been reported stolen from a London home in 1970.

The Police are patting themselves on the back for a job well done :P

QuoteGeneral Mossa said the Gauguin could be worth up to 35 million euros (around $48 million) and the Bonnard at least €500,000 (around $690,000). Auction house experts in New York put the Gauguin's worth at approximately $15 million and the Bonnard's at around $2 million.

QuoteGeneral Mossa said that the police did not know who had taken the Gauguin and Bonnard paintings from London, but he speculated that they had arrived in Italy on a Paris-Turin train, and that whoever was transporting them might have been stopped at customs, abandoning them to the fate of the Italian railroad's lost property office.

Officials there obviously did not recognize the works, so they sold them, General Mossa said. The retired Fiat worker, whose name he declined to disclose, citing continuing investigations, "didn't understand the value, and he kept them in Turin and then in Sicily after he retired."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/arts/design/two-stolen-paintings-are-found-in-italy.html?_r=0

So now what?

Here is the kicker...

QuoteGeneral Mossa identified the original owners as Mathilda Marks, a philanthropist and a daughter of Michael Marks, a founder of the Marks & Spencer department-store chain, and Terence Kennedy, an American whom she had married late in life. But he said that neither was alive, and that the police had not yet identified an heir.

Owner no longer alive, no hei....

QuoteFor now, the Carabinieri are holding the paintings while determining how to proceed. If no heirs to the Marks-Kennedy family are found, the paintings may be returned to the retired factory worker in Sicily. "We have them here," General Mossa said. "If you want to buy them, we can make an offer."

Be interesting to see whether or not the worker gets the paintings back :D