Italian police recovers stolen Chagall painting

PanARMENIAN.Net - Italian police have found a painting by famous artist Marc Chagall, which was stolen from an American yacht moored in Italy a decade ago, in a private collector's home, local media reported on Monday, April 8, according to RIA Novosti.

The "Le Nu au Bouquet," valued at more than €1 million ($1.3 million), was stolen and replaced with a forgery in 2002, when the yacht was undergoing repairs in the port of Savona in northern Italy.

According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, the collector from Turin had bought the stolen art in 2003 in good faith and was not aware of its origins.

Police said three people, including two Romanians who worked on the boat at the time, were under investigation.

One of the most successful artists of the 20th century, Chagall, born in 1887 in the Russian Empire city of Vitebsk, which is now part of northeastern Belarus, is considered a pioneer of modernism. He created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.