Norwegian police recovered The Screamand another stolen masterpiece by Edvard Munch today, two years after the works were seized from a museum by gunmen.
The Scream by Edvard Munch
"We are 100 per cent certain they are the originals," police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. "The damage was much less than feared."
The Screamdepicts a terrified figure under a blood-red sky. The other, Madonna, shows a bare-breasted woman with long black hair.
Two armed men broke into the Munch Museum in Oslo in August 2004 and yanked the two works from the walls in front of dozens of terrified tourists.
The paintings, both from 1893, have been missing even though three men were convicted in May of taking part in the theft and were sentenced to up to eight years in jail.
Two of them were ordered to pay $122 million in damages.