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 Two Vincent Van Gogh paintings have been recovered by police in Italy 14 years after being stolen, officials said Friday. 
 
 Police in Naples said the works — described as being of "priceless value" — were discovered during a crackdown targeting the Naples-based Camorra crime clan, The Associated Press reported. 
 
 "View of the Sea at Scheveningen," which was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1882. 
 
 They were taken from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002 and “appear to be in relatively good condition,” according to a news release announcing the discovery. 
 
 Thieves used a ladder to reach the roof of the attraction and broke into a building through a window. Dutch art thief Octave Durham, nicknamed "The Monkey," and an accomplice were jailed in 2004 for the crime but the paintings remained missing, The New York Times reported. 
 
 "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuene" and "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" are both from the 1880s — relatively early in Van Gogh's career. 
 
 They were found during an investigation by a specialized team within the Italian Public Prosecutions Department, the museum said. 
 
 "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" was painted by Vincent Van Gogh in 1884 and 1885. 
 
 It was not immediately clear when they would be returned to the Netherlands. 
 
 “The criminal case, in which the paintings will be presented as burdens of proof, is still to be held because the investigation is not yet fully completed,” the release said. 
 
 Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, thanked Italian authorities. 
 
 “The paintings have been found! That I would be able to ever pronounce these words is something I had no longer dared to hope for,” he said in a statement. 
 
 Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853 and died in France in 1890. ||||| Works found during major Italian investigation. 
 
 During a press conference today at 11:30 am the Chief Public Prosecutor of the district of Naples will announce that two missing paintings by Van Gogh have been recovered. It concerns the two paintings that were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in 2002: Seascape at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884/85). The curator who inspected the authenticity and provenance of the works at the request of the Italian Public Prosecutions Department drew a firm conclusion: ‘they are the real paintings!’ Despite a 14-year journey, the two paintings appear to be in fairly good condition. Both lack their frames and show signs of some damage. It is not yet clear when the paintings will return to Amsterdam. 
 
 The stolen paintings were recovered during a massive, continuing investigation commissioned by the Italian Public Prosecutions Department, conducted by a specialized Guardia di Finanza team, the team investigating organized crime. 
 
 Axel Rüger, Director of the Van Gogh Museum, present at the press conference in Naples, states: 
 
 ‘After all those years you no longer dare to count on a possible return. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Italian Public Prosecutions Department, the members of the Guardia di Finanza investigation team, the Italian police, the Dutch Public Prosecutions Department, the liaison officers of the Dutch Public Prosecutions Department in Rome and everyone else involved. The paintings have been found! That I would be able to ever pronounce these words is something I had no longer dared to hope for. It is not yet certain when the works will come back to Amsterdam. But I fully believe that we can, once more, count on the unconditional support of the Italian authorities’. 
 
 Fairly undamaged 
 
 Contrary to our expectations, the stolen paintings appear to be in relatively good condition. It is unknown where the works were kept after the theft in 2002, but it can be assumed that the paintings were not preserved under suitable conditions. The frames round both paintings have been removed. The painting Seascape at Scheveningen (1882) has been damaged. The paint in the bottom left corner has broken away on a surface of circa 5 x 2 cm. The stolen canvas Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884/85) looks undamaged at first sight, apart from a few minor damages at the edges of the canvas. Additional research by a conservator should determine the exact condition of the two paintings. 
 
 Unique paintings, of major art historical interest 
 
 The art historical value of the paintings for the collection is huge. Seascape at Scheveningen is the only painting in our museum collection dating from Van Gogh's period in The Hague (1881-1883). It is one of the only two seascapes that he painted during his years in the Netherlands and it is a striking example of Van Gogh's early style of painting, already showing his highly individual character. The hoped-for forthcoming return of the Seascape will fill an important gap in the museum presentation. 
 
 Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen is a small canvas that Van Gogh painted for his mother in early 1884. It shows the church of the Reformed Church community in the Brabant village of Nuenen, Van Gogh's father being its Minister. In 1885, after his father's death, Van Gogh reworked the painting and added the churchgoers in the foreground, among them a few women in shawls worn in times of mourning. This may be a reference to his father's death. The strong biographical undertones make this a work of great emotional value. The museum collection does not include any other painting depicting the church. Moreover, it is the only painting in the Van Gogh Museum collection still in its original stretcher frame. This frame is covered in splashes of paint because Van Gogh probably cleaned his brushes on it. 
 
 Burden of proof in criminal case 
 
 It is not yet known when the works will return. The criminal case, in which the paintings will be presented as burdens of proof, is still to be held because the investigation is not yet fully completed. When the trial will take place is not yet known. ‘It is really a major step that the paintings have been found. We have been waiting for this moment for 14 years. And naturally the only thing you want is to take them straight home with you. But we will have to exercise a little bit more patience, but I am convinced that we can count on the support of the Italian authorities', according to Director Axel Rüger. 
 
 View this work Vincent van Gogh, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, 1882 ||||| Paintings stolen from Amsterdam museum have been recovered from house in stronghold of crime syndicate near Naples 
 
 Two Vincent van Gogh paintings that were stolen from a museum in Amsterdam more than a decade ago have been recovered by Italian law enforcement authorities in Naples after an investigation targeting a powerful organised crime syndicate involved in the cocaine trade. 
 
 The paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, painted in 1882, and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, painted in 1884, were discovered after allegedly being hidden away in a house affiliated with an international drug trafficker based in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. 
 
 Officials hailed the discovery as a major victory in the fight against organised crime. It also provided an insight into the inner workings of the Italian underworld, where precious works of art are seen as valuable currency. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, 1884. Photograph: Getty Images 
 
 The authenticity of the paintings has already been confirmed by an expert from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, from where they were stolen in 2002. 
 
 Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh museum, said he wasn’t sure when the paintings could be returned to the Netherlands, as they are likely to be needed as evidence in the ensuing trial. 
 
 
 
 “After so many years I didn’t dare to think they would ever return,” Rüger said. “We’ve waited 14 years for this moment and of course we’d like to take them straight home. We’ll need to exercise a bit of patience, but I am convinced we can count on the support of the Italian authorities.” 
 
 The frames have been removed and the seascape has a small patch of damage in the bottom left-hand corner, the museum said, but otherwise the paintings appeared to be in good condition. 
 
 
 
 The paintings were discovered thanks to a tipoff from Mario Cerrone, a suspected drug trafficker arrested in January who collaborated with the Camorra, a notorious Neapolitan crime syndicate made up of numerous clans. 
 
 The discovery was part of a broader investigation into the Camorra’s Amato-Pagano clan, which prosecutors said was one of the most dangerous and active gangs of drug traffickers operating in the region. Investigators came across the paintings in a building that they were searching after a judge last week ordered the seizure of the gang’s assets. They also seized a small plane. 
 
 “When we finally found them, we did not believe our eyes,” a local official told La Repubblica. 
 
 The FBI considered the 2002 heist one of the “top 10” art crimes, according to its website. The thieves entered the Van Gogh museum from the roof of the building, which allowed them to get past security and cameras undetected, even though their entry did trigger alarms. They had used a ladder to climb up to a window and then smashed 
 
 Two men, Octave Durham, an art thief who earned the nickname The Monkey for his ability to evade police, and his accomplice Henk Bieslijn, were eventually convicted of the theft in 2004 after police discovered their DNA at the scene of the crime. They were handed four year sentences, but authorities were never able to track down the stolen works. 
 
 View of the Sea at Scheveningen is one of Van Gogh’s early paintings and depicts the beach resort close to The Hague. It was the only work in the museum’s collection from Van Gogh’s two years in The Hague and one of just two Dutch seascapes the artist made. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Detail from Vincent van Gogh’s View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Photograph: Getty Images 
 
 Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen is a smaller work that Van Gogh painted for his mother in 1884, and depicts a church in Brabant where his father Theodorus was attached as a preacher. After his father’s death in 1885 Van Gogh revised the painting, adding figures of women wearing black shawls used in mourning. 
 
 Dario Franceschini, the Italian culture minister, said the discovery was extraordinary and “confirmed the strength of the Italian system in the fight against the illicit trafficking of works of art”. 
 
 John Dickie, a historian and expert in organised crime in Italy, said the reason the country was known for its expertise in following the illicit trade of art was the extent to which that trade existed in the first place. 
 
 “Italy also has the best mafia police in the world, because it has the most powerful mafia networks,” he added. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Axel Rüger (left), director of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, and Naples prosecutor Giovanni Colangelo shake hands in front of the recovered Van Gogh painting Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen. Photograph: Ciro Fusco/EPA 
 
 The town of Castellammare di Stabia, about 19 miles south-east of Naples, where the paintings were found, has long been known as a Camorra stronghold. It was the home of Assunta Maresca, known as Pupetta, who was a former beauty queen, convicted murderer, and Camorra boss described as a trailblazer and suffragette in the syndicate. 
 
 Unlike the highly organised Sicilian mafia, the Camorra is an “archipelago of gangs”, Dickie said, with some branches being more sophisticated than others. 
 
 “It is easy to say the Camorra did it and then jump to the conclusion that the Camorra is moving into the art market,” Dickie said. 
 
 He said the discovery and the alleged involvement of the Camorra reflected the opportunistic nature of the Neapolitan syndicate. Its members spend a lot of time in prison and are part of a vast underworld network in which illegal goods are sold and traded. 
 
 “I don’t think we need to conclude that it’s the Camorra boss who is putting this art on his mantelpiece. A lot of times these people don’t have a lot of class [and] they wouldn’t necessarily be impressed by having this,” Dickie said. 
 
 Federico Varese, an expert in criminology from Oxford University, said it was unsurprising that the discovery exposed a link between Amsterdam and the Camorra, given the Dutch city’s reputation as a major drug hub. Cross-border investigations dating back to the 1980s had found the presence of the Camorra in Amsterdam. 
 
 “What I know for sure is that a lot of camorristi are in Amsterdam, not because they want to be rooted there or deal in racketeering of shops or that kind of thing, but because they are there to buy drugs. Amsterdam is a hub for the buying and selling of illegal goods,” Varese said. 
 
 The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, informed his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, about the police operation before the funeral in Jerusalem of the former Israeli leader Shimon Peres. Renzi also tweeted a message of thanks to Italian law enforcement, saying he was proud of their work. 
 
 ||||| Story highlights Seizure linked to anti-Mafia investigation 
 
 Theft was one of the biggest art crimes in recent years 
 
 Paintings were valued together at $30 million in 2005 
 
 (CNN) Two paintings by Vincent Van Gogh stolen in a heist in the Netherlands have been found, 14 years on, after a "massive" investigation into a group linked to the Italian mafia. 
 
 The artworks were taken from Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum in December 2002 by thieves who broke into the building using a ladder to access the roof. 
 
 'Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen' was found without its frame, and with minor damage. 
 
 The paintings "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen," dating from 1884/85, and "Seascape at Scheveningen," from 1882, were found wrapped in cloth in the basement of an apartment belonging to Raffaele Imperiale -- a rich and powerful drug dealer, according to Italian prosecutor Filippo Beatrice. 
 
 The discovery in the village of Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, was part of a larger investigation into the Amato Pagano clan, an international drug smuggling group affiliated with the Camorra, the region's notorious mafia family. 
 
 Maria Vittoria De Simone, a prosecutor with Italy's anti-mafia department, said Imperiale is believed to be on the run in the United Arab Emirates. Italian authorities have requested his extradition. 
 
 Read More ||||| In January, Italian prosecutors issued arrest warrants for several members of the clan and for criminals associated with them in a drug ring with contacts in Spain and the Netherlands, the Naples prosecutor, Giovanni Colangelo, said in a telephone interview. At the same time, Italian financial police identified assets belonging to the clan — with an estimated value of 20 million euros, or about $22.5 million — that could be confiscated. Those included real estate, two companies, a plane and a boat. 
 
 One of the gang members arrested in January told the police that the two paintings were in a house in the town of Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. The house had at one time been occupied by Raffaele Imperiale, who Mr. Colangelo said was one of the leaders of the trafficking gang. (Mr. Imperiale is in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Colangelo said, and Italian authorities have asked for his extradition.) 
 
 Lt. Col. Agostino Tortora, a financial police officer who worked on the case, said the paintings were found on Sunday afternoon, wrapped up in a cloth in a small hallway next to a kitchen. 
 
 Investigations are underway to determine when the paintings had come into the possession of the clan, he said. “We know they were stolen in 2002, we don’t know when they came here, or if they were stolen specifically for the Camorra, all that has to be investigated,” Colonel Tortora said. 
 
 Mr. Colangelo could not say whether the paintings were an investment for the mob. “It’s not up to me to say why they bought them, all I can say with certainty is that they were stolen,” he said. He added that the paintings would be returned to the Netherlands, “compatibly with the time of the trial.” 
 
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 In a statement, prosecutors described the Amato Pagano clan as “one of the most dangerous and active crime groups among the Camorra gangs of the territory.” 
 
 Col. Giovanni Salerno, the commander of the Naples financial police group that carried out the investigation, told Sky News on Friday that the Camorra families “made a fortune for these organizations, because the profits were enormous.” 
 
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 The Italian culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said in a statement on Friday that the investigation “confirmed how much criminal organizations are interested in works of art, which are used as a form of investment as well as a front of financing.” 
 
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 At the time of the crime, the estimated value of both works was 4 million euros, or about $4.5 million, according to Adriaan Dönszelmann, managing director of the Van Gogh Museum. He declined to comment on the possible value of the works today, because he said “they will not be traded.” 
 
 While works by van Gogh have sold for as much as $82.5 million at auction, pieces from his Hague period and of this style tend to sell for quite a bit less. In June 2015, Christie’s in London sold a Hague-period van Gogh from 1882 for 2.3 million pounds, or about $3.7 million at the time. A landscape he painted in Nuenen sold at Sotheby’s London in 2013 for £1.3 million. 
 
 Mr. Dönszelmann said in an interview that Italian police officials had contacted the museum on Tuesday and had asked if a specialist could travel to Italy to look at two paintings that had been recovered there. “It was absolutely exciting,” he said. 
 
 Arthur Brand, an independent Dutch art crimes investigator who has been following the case, said that only 5 percent to 10 percent of stolen art cases were ever solved. 
 
 “In this case, they were most likely used in what we call ‘art-napping’ — the Mafia often steals work of art and uses them as a kind of payment within their own families,” he said. “Or if a boss is caught, he can sometimes make a deal for a lesser sentence in exchange for offering to help find stolen works of art.” 
 
 Mr. Brand also said that it was known that the paintings had been circulating in the Dutch criminal underworld shortly after they were stolen, and were, at one point, offered to Cornelis van Hout, who was behind the kidnapping of the beer magnate Freddy Heineken. (Mr. van Hout did not buy them, and he was shot and killed shortly after, most likely for reasons unrelated to the paintings.) 
 
 Both of the paintings were found without their frames and have suffered some damage. The paint on the bottom left corner of “Seascape at Scheveningen” has broken away, and “Reformed Church in Nuenen” seems to have minor damage around the edges of the canvas, according to the news release. More examination of the works is needed to determine the extent of the damage. 
 
 The significance of the works to the Van Gogh Museum comes from the subjects he painted: The Scheveningen painting is one of only two seascape paintings from the Hague period in the museum’s collection. The church painting has personal emotional value, said Mr. Dönszelmann, because it depicts the church in Nuenen where van Gogh’s father served as pastor. After his father’s death, van Gogh added figures in mourning dress leaving the church, and he gave it as a gift to his mother. ||||| Though one thief brandished a gun, there were signs that the job was probably not up to robbery's highest standards: The most expensive of the collection's paintings were left behind (the four that were stolen were in one room), and the police said the stolen paintings appeared to be poking out of the back of the white van the men used to make their getaway. 
 
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 "No one theory can fit all examples of art theft, but I think it's often an IQ test for not-so-smart criminals, and a lot of them fail," said James Mintz, the principal of a corporate investigations firm with offices in New York, London, Zurich and other cities that has handled art cases. 
 
 Many of the most notorious art thefts in past decades bear him out and illuminate a strange disconnection between the enduring mystique of art theft and the reality of its perpetrators. The theft in Vienna in 2003 of a gold-plated saltcellar made by Benvenuto Cellini, valued at $60 million, was traced to a 50-year-old alarm-systems specialist with no criminal record. The police called him a "funny guy" who had decided to take the Cellini more or less spontaneously. A divorcé who lived alone, he kept the sculpture under his bed for two years. 
 
 Just last year, two men suspected in the theft of two paintings and a drawing by Picasso from the Paris home of Diana Widmaier-Picasso, a granddaughter of the artist, were caught on the street carrying the paintings, estimated to be worth more than $60 million, rolled up in cardboard tubes. 
 
 Law enforcement officials and officials with the Art Loss Register, a private database of lost and stolen art, emphasize that there are, certainly, highly effective art thieves at work around the world, in an enterprise that the FBI estimates at about $6 billion a year in stolen goods. 
 
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 The marquee example remains the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the biggest art theft in American history, with a value estimated at as high as $300 million. Speculation has run high for years that the crime, still unsolved with the art unrecovered, might have been carried out by the organization of James (Whitey) Bulger, the Boston crime boss, who remains a fugitive. 
 
 In rare cases, it even appears that the most movielike of scenarios - the made-to-order theft - may happen. A suspect in the theft in December of two paintings in Brazil told the authorities that the works were to be delivered to a collector in Saudi Arabia. Derek Fincham, a lawyer who runs the Illicit Cultural Property blog (illicit-cultural-property.blogspot.com), calls this the "Dr. No situation," after the 1962 James Bond movie in which Sean Connery does a double-take upon seeing a recently stolen portrait by Goya hanging on a wall in Dr. No's lair. 
 
 But most art theft experts say that the idea of such an evil connoisseurs' black market is largely a myth, and that many art thefts are committed with insurance company shakedowns in mind. (In such schemes, art is held while backdoor demands are made for insurers to pay the thieves something less than the insurance value of the work; investigators point to cases in which art is recovered with little public explanation offered later about how the return was accomplished or who committed the crime.) 
 
 The mundane reality is that many art thieves are simply not the sharpest grappling hooks in the tool bag; the smart ones choose to steal things that can be much more easily converted into money - or just money itself. 
 
 Thomas McShane, a retired FBI agent who led many art investigations in the 1970s and 1980s, said the motivations and methods of many of the thieves he came across could only be described as humorous. One man tried for years to fence a Rembrandt stolen in 1971 from a museum in France, dropping his street price from $5 million to $25,000, McShane recounted in his 2006 memoir "Stolen Masterpiece Tracker," written with Dary Matera. "His only accomplishment," McShane wrote of the criminal, "was expanding the ever-widening circle of people who knew he had it." (He was caught and served a short prison sentence.) 
 
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 And while thieves in other lines of goods tend to know what they're stealing, many art thieves often seem not to have set foot in a museum or gallery before trying to knock one off. 
 
 McShane recalled a 1986 case in which a New York man, Daniel Kohl, was caught with accomplices in the act of trying to steal more than $20 million in antiquities from a warehouse. In news accounts at the time, the caper sounded quite cinematic. But prosecutors later surmised that much of the art they planned to steal was probably fake. 
 
 "Let me tell you," said McShane, "Danny had about as much knowledge of art as your local hot dog stand man. 'The Thomas Crown Affair' it was not."
– It was a day that Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum may have never thought would come. "The paintings have been found!" Axel Rueger, the museum's director, said at a Naples, Italy, press conference Friday, per a release. Those paintings, according to NBC News, are two of the master's works that were lifted from the museum in 2002, said to be of "priceless value" and recovered by Italian police during a mob sting, officials say. Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen, painted by the artist in the 1880s, were recovered by anti-Mafia cops poking around in a probe into the Camorra crime syndicate. "Despite a 14-year journey, the two paintings appear to be in fairly good condition," a museum press release says, noting the pieces are sans frames and look to have suffered "some damage." Adriaan Donszelmann, the museum's managing director, tells the New York Times that the museum got a call Tuesday from police asking the museum to send an art specialist to check out the two paintings they had retrieved in a house raid. The artworks were deemed authentic, CNN notes. "It was absolutely exciting," Donszelmann says. An art crimes investigator notes it's fortuitous the paintings were even discovered, explaining that valuable paintings such as these are often victims of "art-napping" by members of organized crime that are then used as barter within Mafia families. Art thief Octave Durham, also known as "the Monkey," was sentenced to prison in 2004 for the theft, per the Times, but the paintings were never found—until now. (The Guardian explores the link between the Mafia underworld and valuable art.)