TWO art thieves posing as tourists walked into a Scottish castle yesterday morning, overpowered a woman guide and walked out with the most valuable painting to have been stolen in Britain.

A huge police manhunt was launched after the audacious theft of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, a £60 million Leonardo da Vinci from Drumlanrig Castle, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry’s ancestral home in Dumfries and Galloway.

The robbers, who arrived with other members of the public when the castle opened at 11am, escaped with the master’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder after snatching it from a wall in the staircase hall.

They then calmly walked out of the 17th-century castle and into the visitors’ car park where they joined two other men in a getaway Volkswagen Golf GTi.

The car was last seen travelling along the A76 Thornhill to Durisdeer road that winds through the hills before police set up roadblocks in an attempt to seal off a labyrinth of byways.

The castle, home to one of Britain’s finest art collections, was besieged by police backed by forensic scientists and a helicopter, which scoured the countryside for the white Golf, registration H596 VRP.

It remained a mystery last night how the thieves managed to and remove the painting without triggering alarm systems.

The duke was not available for comment but his son Richard, the Earl of Dalkeith, said: “We are very shocked and deeply distressed by this theft. The painting has been in our family since the mid- 18th century — for more than 250 years.

“It is a work of great serenity and beauty. The National Gallery of Scotland has confirmed it was created in Da Vinci’s workshop in the early 16th century and is largely by the famous artist himself.”

He described the painting as “exceptional and important” — one of the few Leonardo works in private ownership — and added: “The monetary value is not the point. It has given great pleasure to our family and in the past 20 or 30 years it has been available to the public in their tens of thousands. Its loss is impossible to quantify.”

The theft sent reverberations through the art world.

Sarah Jackson, historic claims director of the Art Loss Register, whose database of stolen art includes 140,000 objects, said: “This is an astonishing theft. We’re wondering whether there’s any connection with other high-profile burglaries. The painting’s clearly unsaleable. It’s far too well known to dispose of. Possibly a lot of planning went into taking it, but not into how to dispose it.”

Dick Ellis, director of Trace and an art risk consultant, said that gut instinct suggested a professional job. “You don’t wander into a castle in Scotland and walk out with a Leonardo by accident. I’d expect this to go to ground for a little bit.”

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