Paintings, recovered

The BBC has an article about getting some valuable paintings back:

Italian police have recovered two Van Gogh paintings stolen during a dramatic raid on an Amsterdam museum in 2002. The works were recovered from the Italian mafia in Naples, Italy, they said. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Holland said the works were found during a "massive, continuing investigation" by Italian prosecutors and organized crime officials.
The paintings were taken when thieves used a ladder and sledgehammers to break into the museum. They were eventually found wrapped in cloth in a safe in a house in the picturesque seaside town of Castellammare di Stabia, near Pompeii.
The works were among assets worth millions of euros seized from a Camorra organized crime group linked to cocaine trafficking, Italian reports said. Months earlier, police had arrested several suspected drug traffickers who had invested their proceeds in Dubai, Spain, and the Isle of Man. They were reportedly linked to one of the biggest mafia clans in the Scampia area of northern Naples.
Among those arrested in January were suspected drugs gang leader Raffaele Imperiale and Mario Cerrone. It was Cerrone who apparently told investigators about the two paintings.
The theft of the two works, valued by investigators at a hundred million dollars, led to criticism of security at the world's major art museums. The thieves broke into the museum through the roof during the night of 6 and 7 December 2002 and used sledgehammers to break a first-floor window. They took the paintings off the walls of the main exhibition hall. Experts were baffled at the time of the theft, because guards had been on patrol, and infra-red security systems were in place.
Neither work was insured at the time, and both were on loan to the Van Gogh museum from the Dutch government. Two Dutch citizens were jailed for theft, but always maintained their innocence.
The museum said it was so far unclear when the works would be returned to Amsterdam, but a statement it said they appeared to be in "relatively good condition". Dutch and Italian ministers were overjoyed by the news, and praised Italian investigators. 

James Reynolds of BBC News in Rome has an article about the Naples mafia developing a taste for Dutch masters:

The Camorra crime organization of Naples is not known for its understated good taste. Police raids on members' homes have often revealed a preference for kitschy decoration.
Naples police say they found the two stolen artworks in the possession of the Amato-Pagano clan, which they call one of the most dangerous clans in the region.
Police don't yet know how the clan got hold of them, nor whether its members had been planning to sell the works on the international black market. The art works are now in the hands of Italy's financial police, whose officers, during a brief display, stood on either side of the recovered works. They managed to disguise any admiration they may have had for Van Gogh's brushstrokes. 

Why are the paintings significant?
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is widely considered the greatest Dutch artist after Rembrandt. Seascape at Scheveningen (photo, top) was one of only two seascapes he painted while he lived in the Netherlands. Van Gogh painted Seascape at Scheveningen on a gusty day, and grains of sand were embedded in the wet paint. It shows a foaming, stormy sea and thundery sky, and was painted in 1882 while he was staying in The Hague.
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen (1884) was painted for Van Gogh's mother, but also partly for his father, who had become a pastor at the church in 1882. When his father died in 1884, Van Gogh added churchgoers, including a few women wearing shawls used for mourning. Van Gogh committed suicide in France in 1890.

Rico says you can steal genius, but you can't create it...