A Dutch art detective has returned two priceless stone reliefs stolen from an ancient Spanish church after tracing them to an English nobleman’s garden where they were displayed as ornaments. Arthur Brand, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the art world”, said he handed over the centuries-old carvings to the Spanish embassy in London at a private ceremony on Monday. It was the culmination of a long search for the artworks, which were snatched in 2004 from the Santa Maria de Lara church in northern Spain, believed to be at least 1,000 years old. They turned up in the garden of an aristocratic British family who had unwittingly bought them, and it was there that Brand found them covered in mud and leaves. “These artworks are priceless. To find them in a garden after searching for eight years is just incredible,” the art sleuth told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Dutch art detective has returned two priceless stone reliefs stolen from an ancient Spanish church after tracing them to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n