The Italian police in Milan on Wednesday recovered 6 million euros worth of jewels that once belonged to Argentine Eva Peron around two years after they were stolen from a store in Spain.
The diamond earrings, diamond tiara and rings were found in a hotel near Milan. According to police, jewels were stolen by a group of Roma Gypsies from a store in Valencia, Spain in December 2009. The thieves got away with 10 million euros worth of valuables.
Maria Eva Duarte de Peron, was the second wife of Argentine leader Juan Peron. She died of cancer in 1952 at 33 years old.
It was in Milan where her embalmed body was discovered after it disappeared following her husband’s overthrow in a 1955 coup. He fled to Spain and that is where her remains were sent after they were found in a Milan cemetery marked by the assumed name of a nun.
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Schiele work goes for record £25 million
London: A monumental cityscape painting by Austrian artist Egon Schiele on Wednesday smashed the world record after it was sold for £25 million at a London auction.
Haeuser mit bunter Wasche (Vorstadt II) (Houses with Laundry (Suburb II)) eventually went under the hammer at Sotheby’s auction house for £24,681,250, almost double the previous auction record for the artist.
The 1914 oil painting is “loosely based on motifs drawn from Krumau”, the Southern Bohemia town in which the artist’s mother was born and which inspired some of his greatest works, Sotheby’s said.
Proceeds from the sale of the work, completed four years before the artist died aged 28, will go towards resolving a long-running dispute over an art work stolen by the Nazis.
Portrait of Wally eventually found its way into the hands of the museum, which decided to sell Haeuser mit bunter Wasche to fund the compensation claim, keeping hold of the disputed work. —AFP