FOUR alleged art smugglers linked to the Mafia are under arrest after the recovery of a priceless Italian Renaissance masterpiece in a sting in which undercover police posed as art collectors.

The Adoration of the Magi, by Parmigianino, was recovered from a villa near the Mediterranean French-Italian border, police in Genoa said. It was stolen on Boxing Day in 1994 from a Dominican monastery at Taggia, not far from the border at Ventimiglia.

Police mounted the undercover operation after the painting, which they believe had been hidden in France since its theft, was brought across the border for the supposed sale at the villa, near Ventimiglia.

After being shown the painting, one of the undercover officers pretended to phone an art expert for an opinion, and signalled to a police squad waiting near by to burst in. Three Italians from Calabria and a Frenchman are being questioned.

Police said that they learnt of the whereabouts of the stolen painting by chance during an investigation into infiltration of the Mediterranean Riviera by members of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia.

They said that one of the gang, the apparent ringleader, named as Salvatore Carpino, had a police record for Mafia crimes, including attempted murder. Police said that the agents posing as collectors had led the gang to believe that they would pay €2 million (£1.4 million) for the painting, which was “in almost perfect condition”.

Parmigianino (1503-1540), noted for his portraits and draughtsmanship, is held by many art historians to be one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. The Milan newspaper Il Giornale described him yesterday as being on “the same level as Raphael, Titian,Michelangelo and Correggio”.

He was born Girolamo Francesco Mazzola and took the name Parmigianino from Parma, his native town, where a major exhibition of his works was mounted earlier this year to mark the 500th anniversary of his birth. It has since transferred to Vienna.

The National Gallery holds four works by him. The recovered painting, which is 120cm (47in) by 90cm (35in), had been cut out of its valuable frame, which is still missing.

Rodolfo Ronconi, head of the Italian section of Interpol, said that many masterpieces were held in Italian churches or monasteries where security was “often weak”. In the 1980s a Nativity by Caravaggio was stolen from a church in Palermo by the Mafia, and has never been found. Father Giuseppe Paparone, head of the monastery at Taggia, said that he was delighted to have the painting back. Vittorio Sgarbi, an exhibition organiser and former deputy Minister of Culture, said that the painting might now be included in an exhibition of Renaissance works to be staged next year in Genoa, the 2004 European Capital of Culture.

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