Cyprus St. Mark mosaic: Latest piece from stolen Kanakaria.
Missing for 40 years, a 1,600-year-old mosaic depicting St. Mark is back in Cyprus, thanks to the “Indiana Jones of the art world.”
Arthur Brand of The Netherlands is an art investigator, and after two years of searching, finally found the mosaic, which was looted from an Orthodox Christian church in Cyprus in the 1970s, in an apartment in Monaco. He told Agence France-Presse that a British family bought the mosaic “in good faith more than four decades ago.” When he finally had the mosaic in his possession, it was “one of the greatest moments of my life,” he said.
Brand delivered the mosaic to the Cypriot embassy in The Hague on Friday, and it was back in Cyprus by Sunday. He earned the Indiana Jones nickname in 2015 after he found two horse statues that once stood outside Adolf Hitler’s office.
