[CPProt.net] Goya's "Cannibal Count" recovered in Montenegro

[Ellie Bruggeman]

Goya's "Cannibal Count" recovered in Montenegro

PODGORICA, Serbia-Montenegro (Reuters) - A stolen painting by Francisco 
de Goya of one of Italian history's darkest characters, the Cannibal 
Count, has been recovered in Montenegro, an Interior Ministry source 
said on Wednesday.

Snatched in December 2001 from an exhibition in Turin, the Spanish 
master's painting of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca was traced to the 
mountainous Adriatic republic and tracked down to a house in the suburbs 
of the capital, Podogorica.

The source said police had observed the suspected thieves for four 
months in a clandestine operation and coordinated closely with their 
Italian coounterparts.

Montenegro's relations with Italy appeared to be recovering after years 
of mistrust stemming from the republic's alleged role as a haven for 
cigarette smugglers and the stolen luxury car trade.

The source said two brothers, Goran and Dejan Mugosa, aged 29 and 35, 
had been arrested.

The oil painting, about the size of a sheet of letter paper, depicts the 
count and two boys.

In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Ugolino and his sons and grandsons were 
locked in a tower in Pisa and starved to death in 1289. When they died, 
the famished count consumed their flesh.

The work was bought in the late 1990s for just $250 but later attributed 
by experts to Goya and, at the time of the theft, insured for $500,000 
pending recognition by the official Italian art critics circle.

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