Stolen Masterpiece Returned To Spain -- U.S. Art Sting Recovered Rubens Work Taken In '85

WASHINGTON - A 356-year-old Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece is back in the hands of the Spanish government after it was seized in a U.S. Customs sting that was aided by a prominent New York publishing figure.

Thieves tried to sell the painting, about the size of a standard book cover, for $3 million, agents said. It will be carried within a week to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Galicia, from which it was stolen in 1985, Spanish Embassy officials said.

The painting came to Washington after a journey through Sweden, Nicaragua and Miami that ended May 16, 1991, when customs agents Hank Blair and David D'Amato arrested four people in a Miami hotel.

Blair said he posed as a representative of an Ohio art buyer to make the deal. Charles Scribner, New York publishing executive and an expert on Rubens' work, was with Blair during the final meeting with the sellers to authenticate the painting, D'Amato said.

The Rubens, also known as "Psyche," shows a buxom woman in flowing white and red cloth, one breast exposed, holding a steaming or smoking goblet or torch. It was painted by the Flemish master in 1636 on a commission for King Philip IV of Spain.

U.S. Customers Commissioner Carol Hallett and Spanish charges d'affaires Jorge Fuentes lifted the painting out of its Styrofoam box and placed it on a table in the embassy, pointing out two small chips along its edge.

One, agents said, had been cut away by a prospective buyer seeking to authenticate the painting and the other also occurred while it was in the criminals' possession. Both likely would be unnoticeable if the painting is framed as it was at the museum.

D'Amato, special agent in charge of Customs' Miami office, said an informant was paid $40,000 for tipping off agents to the fact a Rubens was for sale. No money was paid in the sting operation itself, the agents said in interviews before the ceremonies.

A federal court convicted Dimiter Michael Dimitroff, an Austrian American, and father and son Robert and Pablo Alvarez of Nicaragua of smuggling stolen property. Each was sentenced to 18 months in prison and five years' probation.

Orli Beigel, who has dual Israeli and Mexican citizenship, was given a suspended sentence in exchange for cooperating with authorities. She had put the agents in contact with the Alvarezes.

Pablo Alvarez had smuggled the painting into the country through Miami wrapped in a dirty rag that Blair described as "the kind of cloth you wipe the dipstick with in a gas station."