Unholy row as woman refuses to return museum's stolen painting

A 16th-century painting that has resurfaced in Britain after being stolen from an Italian museum is at the centre of an ownership battle.

- Dalya Alberge

The Madonna and Child by Antonio Solario is in the possession of a Norfolk woman who is refusing to return it even though it is listed on police databases of missing art.

The painting was acquired in 1872 by the civic museum of Belluno near Venice and remained there until thieves struck in 1973.

Other paintings taken in the raid were recovered soon afterwards in Austria but the Madonna and Child ended up in the hands of Barbara de Dozsa. She insists it belongs to her, partly because her late former husband, Baron de Dozsa, bought it in good faith in 1973.

Until their divorce, they kept it at their 16th-century Norfolk manor, East Barsham in Fakenham, a property Henry VIII is said to have called his "small country palace".

In 2017, De Dozsa tried to sell the painting at auction where it was spotted by someone linked to the Belluno museum who said it was on the "most wanted" lists both at Interpol and the Italian carabinieri.