Although I didn't know a whole lot about this particular painting, I really was interested when I read this article I found. This exact place happened in London. I mean people would do anything and everything to get some cash in their pocket thinking that they would never get caught. Well it is a million dollar icon, so I'm pretty sure the people in charge of the icon will do anything in their power to catch the person who did it. A 14th-century icon worth an estimated £1m has been returned to Greece 30 years after it was stolen from a monastery located in the northern city of Serres. Scotland Yard handed over the Byzantine icon depicting “the Deposition of Christ from the Holy Cross” to embassy officials in London on 6 November after a British court ruled that the work should be returned to Greece. Sometime after the 1978 theft, the work, which had been cut in half to fit inside a suitcase, came into the possession of a Greek-born, London-based shipping entrepreneur and art collector. The work was identified as stolen in 2002 when Ioannis Petsopoulos, acting as an agent for the collector, offered to sell the piece to the Benaki Museum in Athens. The museum reported the incident to the ministry of culture, which in turn sought to recover the icon using legal and diplomatic channels. The work is currently on temporary display at the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens and will undergo essential conservation before it can be returned to the monastery. At a ceremony in Athens on 18 November, Greek culture minister Michalis Liapis referred to the illicit trade in antiquities as “a marathon”, adding: “Successes like today’s fill us with optimism. But mainly they multiply our experience in this sector and make us more effective and readier for battle.”
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