“A Gift to the City”

The letter went to a reporter at Libertà, the newspaper in Piacenza. Its writers made a bold claim.

“We are the authors of the theft of Klimt's Portrait of a Lady,” it said, “and we have given a gift to the city by returning the canvas.”

Reports described the writers as two local men in their 60s. By then, the time limit for prosecuting the theft had run out.

The letter did not claim that its writers had hidden the painting in the wall.

A police officer put it simply. “They could have sold it or burned it,” he said. “But the good news is, we have found the painting.”