A Picasso painting that was stolen in an elaborate heist nearly ten years ago has been recovered by Greek police.
'Woman's Head', a 1939 cubist bust, was found in a rural location outside Athens, a Hellenic police spokesman confirmed to the Telegraph. Police also recovered a painting by Piet Mondrian, a 1905 oil of a riverside watermill.
Further details will be revealed at a press conference on Tuesday, the spokesman said.
The paintings were stolen in 2012, when a criminal gang set off the alarms so many times at the Athens National Gallery that security disabled the system - allowing thieves to sneak in, strip the paintings from their frames and escape within seven minutes.
The burglary was interrupted by a guard who spotted the gang through the use of a motion detector. A third piece they stole, a pen and ink drawing by 16th century Italian painter Guglielmo Caccia, is still missing. The burglars also dropped a fourth painting, also by Mondrian, as they fled.
'Woman's head' was gifted to Greece by Picasso in 1949 in "homage to the Greek people" to honour their resistance against the Nazi occupation in World War Two.
The National Gallery of Greece is the largest repository of Greek art in the country and boasts over 20,000 priceless other works, thanks in part to the donation of the collection of Alexandros Soutzos, a jurist and collector.
Reuters news agency reported that a 49-year-old Greek man has been arrested in connection with the theft.
