[MSN] Painting Stolen From Russia's Hermitage Museum Returned.

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Painting Stolen From Russia's Hermitage Museum Returned
	World	

Avatar06:03 PM, December 20th 2006
by Editorial Staff
		
 A painting that was stolen from Russia's Hermitage Museum in 2001 was
returned Wednesday to the office of Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the
country's Communist Party. French artist's Jean-Leon Gerome's Orientalist
painting Pool in a Harem was delivered by an unidentified man to Zyuganov's
Moscow office, the politician said in remarks carried by Interfax.

Experts from Russia's Culture Ministry, Zyuganov said, "have preliminarily
confirmed the painting's authenticity and have informed Hermitage director
Mikhail Piotrovsky."

The 1876 painting was stolen from the St Petersburg museum in 2001 after a
museum employee who was monitoring the room stepped out. Without any alarm
to guard it, the painting was cut out of its frame in a matter of seconds,
experts said at the time. No-one has ever been arrested for the crime.

The painting, which is estimated to be worth 1 million dollars, was folded
into quarters by the thieves, Zyuganov, a legislator in the Russian
parliament said, and it had been badly damaged.

Russia's top Communist noted, however, that officials from the culture
ministry said it could likely be mended by restorers.

The painting depicts two nude women lounging near a bath in an Arab-style
salon as a dark-skinned peddler holds out a water pipe.

Zyuganov said he received a phone call Wednesday from an unidentified person
who said he had an original painting that looked like a work that had been
stolen from the Hermitage five years ago.

The painting was later dropped outside of Zyuganov's office, and the
lawmaker found on the Internet a 2001 notice from the Hermitage in which the
theft was announced. Zyuganov called the culture ministry, which immediately
sent specialists to his office.

Pool in a Harem, which is also known as Harem Pool or Harem Bath, was
obtained by Tsar Alexander III in 1876. It is one of four Gerome's at the
Hermitage, the world's second-largest museum, after Paris' Louvre.

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