Eagle-Eyed Experts Say They’ve Solved the Mystery of a Missing Masterpiece—Half a Century After It Was Stolen

When a painting by the Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel the Younger disappeared from a Polish museum in 1974, experts assumed it was lost to history.

Half a century later, Woman Carrying the Embers has been rediscovered in the Netherlands. It’s now in the custody of Dutch authorities, and Polish officials have formally requested its return.

The 17th-century oil painting depicts a peasant woman holding tongs with hot coals in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. Until its disappearance, it had been on display at the National Museum in Gdańsk, Poland.

“We are 100 percent sure that it’s the same painting that disappeared from the National Museum in Gdansk back in 1974,” Richard Bronswijk, a member of the Dutch police’s arts crime unit, tells Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The burglary sparked decades of speculation and rumors. It wasn’t until 2024 that a breakthrough came—thanks to a team of journalists, police officers and the renowned art detective Arthur Brand.

“Normally, when something is lost for half a century, not in that many cases you recover it. The longer it takes, the more likely you never see it again,” Brand tells Senay Boztas of the Guardian. “It was all pure luck that everything fell into place.”

The saga began when Vind, a Dutch art and antiques magazine, published an article about an exhibition at the Gouda Museum in the Netherlands last year. Among the paintings on display was Woman Carrying the Embers. It was said to be on loan from a private collection.

Around this time, John Brozius, a contributor to Vind, came across an old black-and-white photo of the stolen painting in an archival news article. Brozius reached out to Brand, an art sleuth who has made a career out of recovering stolen masterpieces.

Nicknamed the “Indiana Jones of the art world,” Brand has contributed to many successful recoveries in recent years. With the help of Dutch police, he searched for additional clues—and discovered an entry in Interpol’s database noting that the artwork had been stolen.

After examining other works by Brueghel, “I concluded that the painting listed by Interpol and the one on display was one and the same,” says Brand to AFP. The Dutch police’s arts crime unit has come to the same conclusion. “We have checked and rechecked, including information on the back of the painting. It’s a match!” Bronswijk tells the news agency.

Back in 1974, officials first discovered the theft when a museum worker accidentally knocked the Brueghel painting off the wall. When she examined the work, she was shocked to find that the masterpiece had been replaced with a magazine cutout.

Polish authorities launched an investigation, but it faced obstacles. Police arranged an interview with Romuald Werner, a customs officer who had raised concerns about illegal art exports through the port in Gdynia, Poland. But days after the burglary, Werner was found dead.

“Someone didn’t want him to go to [the] police and tell his story,” Brand tells Adam Schrader of Artnet. “Then the police had to give [the case] to Poland’s Security Service, and they closed the investigation, which is quite strange.”

According to the Polish Radio, legal proceedings are ongoing. For his part, Brand hopes that Woman Carrying the Embers will eventually return to the National Museum in Gdańsk.

“It’s a great moment because of how much [the painting] means for Poland,” Brand tells the Guardian. “It’s on their list of most wanted paintings, and they have waited 50 years probably thinking it would never come back.”