A 6th century Byzantine mosaic depicting an image of St Mark, taken from a church in Cyprus more than 40 years ago, has been returned.
Valued at between €5 and €10 million, the mosaic was reportedly found by a Dutch art investigator, Arthur Brand, following a two year hunt.
Brand, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the art world”, tracked it down to an apartment on Monaco. It had reportedly been in the possession of a British family who had bought it in “good faith” more than 40 years ago, he told AFP.
“They were horrified when they found out that it was in fact a priceless art treasure, looted from the Kanakaria Church after the Turkish invasion,” he was reported as saying.
The mosaic was handed to the Cypriot Embassy in the Netherlands on Friday and has since been returned to Cyprus.
Believed to have been made around 550AD, the mosaic was part of a set taken from the Panayia Kanakaria church, located about 105 kilometres north-east of Nicosia, following the Turkish invasion in 1974.
On Brand’s website, it states that the mosaic is “considered to be some of the most important surviving pieces of early Christian artwork, having escaped the almost total destruction of religious images during the Byzantine Iconoclastic period from 726 to 843 AD”.
Brand had been working with the Church of Cyprus to recover the artwork. A mosaic depicting St Andrew and taken from the same church was returned in April.
