Police foils thieves by exchanging 2.5 million pounds of Brueghel paint for fake

The Italian police secretly invaded a painting by a Flemish master with a counterfeit before thieves stole it from a church.

Thieves have attempted to seize Pieter Brueghel the Younger's Crucifixion, which dates back to the 1600s and whose value is estimated at € 3m (£ 2.5m).

But instead, they took a fake version exhibited at the church Santa Maria Maddelena in the small town of Castelnuovo Magra, in the northeastern region of Liguria, Wednesday morning.

The city police had quietly removed the original to keep it safe more than a month ago, after hearing rumors about a plot to steal it.

The mayor of the city, Daniele Montebello, who helped to conceal the subterfuge, said in a statement: "Rumor has begun circulating that someone could steal the work and the national police decided to protect him , replacing it with a copy and installing surveillance cameras. "

"For investigative reasons, we can not reveal anything more."

He thanked the police and the community saying, "Some members of the congregation noticed that the exposed painting was not the original, but they did not reveal the secret."

According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the police would be looking for two men suspected of acting on commission and who would have been seen removing the painting and leaving by car in a Peugeot car.

The painting has always been saved by the community since it was donated to the church more than a century ago by a wealthy family.

During the Second World War, "crucifixion" should have been hidden from Nazi soldiers, known to ransack the occupied territory.

In 1981, thieves managed to steal the painting before it was found by the police a few months later.

Theft of church works in churches has long been endemic in the country, including the altarpiece of the Nativity, lost by Caravaggio, which was stolen from a church in Palermo in 1969.

In 2017, the police found more than 100 works of a total value of 7 million euros, stolen in 24 different flights in churches and other institutions in the south and center of the city. 39; Italy.