Baroque masterpiece ‘stolen by Romanian cat burglars’ returned to Christ Church

A Baroque masterpiece stolen from Christ Church, Oxford, by possible Romanian cat burglars has been found, but the search is ongoing for two more paintings taken in the £10 million heist.

During lockdown in 2020, burglars broke through the skylight of the college’s art gallery and snatched three centuries-old oil paintings, prompting a four-year hunt for the artworks.

One of the paintings has now been recovered in Romania following a Europe-wide search for the looted Baroque canvases, and the undamaged piece has been rehung in the Christ Church Picture Gallery.

Police have revealed that the landscape painting, A Rocky Coast, by Salvator Rosa, the 17th-century Italian artist, was handed over by a dealer in Bucharest, who said he had sold off the other two artworks before realising they were stolen.

Thames Valley Police and the Romanian authorities are continuing their search for Antony Van Dyck’s A Boy Drinking and A Soldier on Horseback by Annibale Carracci, but DNA and fingerprints left on the recovered painting may help them to track down the missing works.

Det Chief Insp James Mather said there was still hope the other works would be found, telling The Telegraph: “I’m really very pleased to have recovered the Salvator Rosa painting and hopefully we’ve had some breakthroughs.

“We are optimistic that lines of inquiry will open up that will lead us to the other two paintings.”

Police believe the Christ Church Picture Gallery was broken into on March 14 2020 by a gang of at least three men, who smashed the skylight over the basement-level space, and climbed in using ladders.

Alarms sounded immediately and Jacqueline Thalmann, the gallery curator, was on the scene in minutes, but the gang had already escaped back through the skylight, and apparently across Christ Church’s meadow.

There had been rumours at the time that they had sped down the Thames on a boat.

Ms Thalmann told The Telegraph that the thieves’ choice of paintings was perplexing, but that all three artworks were “unchallenging” and “accessible”, either to uninitiated burglars or to a criminal collector.

“They don’t require any deep knowledge of art history or theology to enjoy,” she said.

Other paintings in the gallery are portraits of obscure English figures or religious images.

Mr Mather told the Telegraph that it is unclear whether the paintings were “stolen to order” at a kingpin collector’s request, or if thieves had simply identified a valuable set of paintings they believed they could sell.

The burglars may have been Romanian nationals, according to police.

Following the heist, the paintings ended up in the hands of a man in Bucharest, who is now helping Romanian authorities with their inquiries, and is being treated as a witness.

He is understood to have sold the Carracci and Van Dyck, the two more valuable paintings in the £10 million trio, before realising they were stolen and handed the third over to the Romanian police.

Mr Mather travelled to Bucharest with a crime scene investigator to inspect the painting, and found “significant” forensic evidence which could help police trace the suspects and the missing paintings.

Police hope that the artworks have remained in Europe following their sale in Romania, and will be found in the same undamaged and unrolled state as A Rocky Coast.

Ms Thalmann said: “It’s wonderful, it’s really wonderful. It gives you this spark of hope that the others are there and will come back.”