Lost and found: 5 pieces of Dutch Golden Age art have been recovered after a 10 year hunt

Five artworks from the Dutch Golden Age are finally returning to their rightful place, more than a decade after they disappeared into the shadowy depths of the illicit art market.

The works belong to the Westfries Museum, located in the Dutch maritime town of Hoorn, where they will be unveiled on October 7 – a far cry from Ukraine, where the paintings were uncovered.

A new deal

In January 2005, thieves are thought to have hidden inside a coffin on display inside the museum before disabling the security system and taking off with 24 paintings and 70 pieces of silverware. It was the bulk of the museum’s 17th and 18th century collection, worth approximately 1.3 million euros ($1.45 million).

With no solid leads, it was feared the paintings would never be traced. But in July 2015, the museum’s director, Ad Geerdink, received word that someone from a Ukrainian militia force, a man named Borys Humeniuk, had made contact with the Dutch embassy in Kiev.

A deputy commander from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Humeniuk claimed to have found the paintings, and said he was willing to hand them over.

“He said his battalion had found all 24 painting in a villa belonging to former president Viktor Yanukovych while fighting Russian separatists in the east of the country,” claimed Geerdink.

In 1911, Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian who had been a handyman for the museum. The now-iconic painting was recovered two years later.

A statue called "Young Girl With Serpent" by Auguste Rodin was stolen from a home in Beverly Hills, California, in 1991. It was returned after someone offered it on consignment to Christie's auction house. Rodin, a French sculptor considered by some aficionados to have been the father of modern sculpture, lived from 1840 until 1917. His most famous work, "The Thinker," shows a seated man with his chin on his hand.

Picasso's "La Coiffeuse" ("The Hairdresser") was discovered missing in 2001 and was recovered when it was shipped from Belgium to the United States in December 2014. The shipper had listed the item as a $37 piece of art being sent to the United States as a Christmas present.

Italy's Culture Ministry unveils two paintings by the French artists Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard on April 2, 2014. The paintings were stolen from a family house in London in 1970, abandoned on a train and then later sold at a lost-property auction, where a factory worker paid 45,000 Italian lira for them -- roughly equivalent to 22 euros ($30) at the time.

A 19th-century Renoir painting was stolen from a US museum in 1951 and then bought at a flea market in 2010. A judge later ruled that it to be returned to the museum. The 5½-by-9-inch painting, titled "Landscape on the Banks of the Seine," was bought for $7 at a flea market by a Virginia woman.