The Scream recovered

Munch's masterpieces The Scream and Madonna have been recovered two years after masked gunmen stole the paintings from a Norwegian museum.

The Edvard Munch artworks were retrieved in an operation by Norway police. The paintings were stolen in a bold, daylight raid from the Munch Museum in Oslo on August 2004.

“The pictures came into our hands this afternoon after a successful police action,” said Iver Stensrud, head of the police investigation.
He said the police had been working intensely for two years to find the paintings and no reward was paid.

“All that remains is an expert examination to confirm with 100 percent certainty, that these are the original paintings. We believe these are the originals,” Stensrud said.

The paintings had remained missing despite the conviction of three suspects in the case in May, an international police hunt and the offer of a reward by the City of Oslo, which owns the paintings.