(Adds confirmation of authenticity by Swiss authorities)
BELGRADE/ZURICH, April 12 (Reuters) – Police in Serbia have
recovered a painting by the French artist Paul Cezanne that was
stolen at gunpoint from a Swiss museum four years ago, officials
said on Thursday.
Cezanne’s Boy in a Red Waistcoat, which media said was worth
more than $100 million, was one of four paintings stolen from
the E. G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich in 2008 by a trio of
masked robbers who burst in just before closing time and told
staff to lay on the floor while they took what they wanted.
The heist was one of the largest in the world at the time.
Three men were arrested in Belgrade on Wednesday in
connection with the theft and the director of the Buehrle
collection confirmed the authenticity of the painting, the
Zurich state prosecutor’s office said.
Boy in a Red Waistcoat, thought to have been painted in
1888, depicts a boy in traditional Italian dress wearing a red
waistcoat, a blue handkerchief and a blue belt. Three other
versions of the painting are in museums in the United States.
Two of the stolen canvasses, one by Claude Monet and the
other by Vincent Van Gogh, were recovered not long after the
robbery, abandoned in a car. A work by Edgar Degas is still
missing.
The Buehrle collection, one of the most important
20th-century private holdings of European art, was amassed by
the industrialist Emil Georg Buehrle, who derived his wealth
from producing and selling anti-aircraft guns.
Last October, Serbian police recovered two paintings by
Pablo Picasso – Tete de Cheval (Horse’s Head) and Verre et
Pichet (Glass and Pitcher) – stolen in 2008 from a gallery in
the Swiss town of Pfaeffikon, near Zurich.
(Reporting By Aleksandar Vasovic; Additional reporting by Emma
Thomasson and Catherine Bosley in Zurich; Editing by Alison
Williams)
