Van Gogh recovered after being stolen from Egyptian museum for second time

Alastair Jamieson Telegraph 08/21/2010 15:04

A painting by Vincent van Gogh, 'Vase with Flowers' valued at £32 million, was seized at Cairo airport hours after being stolen from a museum for the second time.

The work, which also goes by the name “Poppy Flowers”, vanished from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum on the banks of the River Nile in central Cairo.

Egypt’s minister of culture, Farouk Hosni, said airport security officials confiscated the painting from two Italians on Saturday evening.

He said the pair - a young man and a young woman - had been trying to leave the country and had been arrested.

It is the second time that the canvas by the Dutch-born post-impressionist has been stolen from the museum. Thieves previously made off with it in 1978, before authorities recovered it two years later at an undisclosed location in Kuwait.

The one-foot-by-one-foot painting resembles a flower scene painted by the French artist Adolphe Monticelli, whose work deeply affected the young van Gogh. The Monticelli painting also is part of the Khalil collection.

The theft of the work for the second time is embarrassing for the museum authorities, who are understood to be facing an inquiry into claims that security at the museum was lax. Exact details of the first theft of the painting have never been disclosed.

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