PARIS: A Picasso worth over $37 million that was seized from a yacht off the French island of Corsica has been transferred to a Madrid museum.
The painting, which was subject to a Spanish export ban, had been seized by French customs at the end of July.
On Tuesday, a team of Spanish police experts in national heritage flew to Corsica to retrieve the painting, and escorted it to the Reina Sofia Museum, which houses Pablo Picasso’s large anti-war masterpiece Guernica, a police statement said.
They were accompanied by an art restorer and an expert in packaging art works from the museum.
“The painting will be stored in a warehouse of the museum until we know more about its destiny,” a museum spokesman said.
Entitled Head of a Young Woman, the 1906 work is estimated by Spanish police to be worth $39.6 million, and considered a national treasure in Picasso’s native Spain.
It is owned by Jaime Botin, a well-known Spanish banker whose family founded the Santander banking group.
On July 31, French customs agents seized the painting from a British-flagged yacht off Corsica, halting what they said was an attempt to export it to Switzerland.
Mr Botin, 79, had been trying since 2012 to obtain authorisation to export the painting, but the culture ministry refused because there was “no similar work on Spanish territory” from the same period in Picasso’s life.
