It sounds like the plot to a madcap movie – “Entrapment” by way of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, perhaps – but a small Italian village actually got the better of robbers who thought they were stealing a genuine painting by a Flemish master worth millions of dollars.
“The Crucifixion,” by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, hangs in the Santa Maria Maddalana church in Castelnuovo Magra. It was donated to the church over a century ago, and was stolen once before in 1981. In February of this year, local authorities got wind of a plot to steal the painting again, and they concocted a scheme of their own.
