Four years after it was last cleaned and repaired Michelangelo's statue of David in Florence is "at risk of collapse", according to a restoration expert. Antonio Borri, professor of construction engineering at Perugia University and part of the team monitoring the statue's state of conservation, said that cracks which been repaired during a 2004 restoration marking the 500th anniversary of the statue's creation had re-appeared.

A seminar in Florence tomorrow will discuss the options for saving the statue, which is kept at the Galleria dell Accademia and attracts more than a million people a year. These include enclosing it in a protective covering to stop further deterioration and even closing it to the public altogether for a period. Professor Borri, who is a Florentine, said that the cracks had "re-opened one by one. David is coming apart". He said the blame lay with traffic vibrations and the pressure of thousands of daily visitors. Michelangelo's masterpiece — held by many to be the most perfect representation of the nude male form ever sculpted — was also vulnerable because of its huge size and the poor quality of marble Michelangelo used, Professor Borri said.

He said that the statue was under "round the clock observation", and seismic monitors would be inserted under the statue's base to measure the vibrations. "We have got to do something quickly," he said. However Cristina Acidini, head of museums in Florence, played down the alarm.

Professor Acidini said: "We are evaluating what measures to take to protect the statue in view of its known fragility", but there was "no cause for immediate concern". The statue was being constantly monitored, and the only danger of collapse would be if Florence was struck by an unusually powerful earthquake. "But in that case the museum itself would be at risk, together with much of Florence's artistic heritage."

Just minutes after the museum opened, the 41-year-old German man pushed aside two security men guarding the exhibit.

"Then he went over to the figure and ripped off the head," a police spokesman said.

The man tore off the head in protest at the exhibit, the spokesman added. The police were alerted and arrested the man, who did not resist. He was later released though he remained under investigation for assault and damaging property.

The waxwork figure of a glum-looking Adolf Hitler in a mock bunker during the last days of his life was criticized as being in bad taste. A media preview of the new branch of Madame Tussauds on Thursday was overshadowed by a row over the exhibit.

What is an Art-o-mat? Art-o-mat machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. There are 82 active machines in various locations throughout the country.

What do you get from an Art-o-mat? The experience of pulling the knob alone is quite a thrill, but you also walk away with an original work of art. What an easy way to become an art collector.

Want to be an Artomat artist? There are around 400 contributing artists from 10 different countries currently involved in the Art*o*mat project. We are always searching for fresh work.

Stefan Bucher's new book 100 Daily Monsters is the end-product of a 100-day-long experiment in which Bucher posted a daily video of himself squirting a random blob of ink onto paper and then coloring in and around it to make it into a hairy, scary (and animated) monster. The videos are utterly charming and not a little hypnotic, and Bucher's blog has tons of monsters and their stories from fans all over the world.

"Putting Looney in the Toons" will return to the big screen some of the short cartoons Avery and Maltese worked on together as well as selected highlights from their prolific individual careers in animated theatrical films. The screenings will be complemented by audio presentations of rare recorded interviews with both Avery and Maltese discussing their careers with film historian Joe Adamson. In addition, the evening will feature a panel discussion with Brenda Maltese Moulthrop, daughter of Michael Maltese, and several of Avery and Maltese's collaborators, including Martha Sigall, Jerry Eisenberg and Don Jurwich.

Avery and Maltese, both born in 1908, crossed professional paths at the Warner Bros. animation studio back when it was Leon Schlesinger Productions. Avery began his career at Walter Lantz's Universal cartoon studio, working on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. In 1935 he moved to Warner Bros., where he would create Daffy Duck and crystallize the personality of Bugs Bunny. From 1941 to 1954 Avery directed cartoons for MGM, introducing audiences to Screwy Squirrel, Droopy Dog and a whole new style of animated humor. In 1954 he initiated his final theatrical cartoons for Walter Lantz, including several Chilly Willy classics. Maltese began at Warner Bros. in 1937 and actually appeared on camera as a studio guard in "You Ought to Be in Pictures," a 1940 Porky Pig short. After working with Avery and many other Warner Bros. directors, Maltese would go on to collaborate primarily with Chuck Jones, writing and storyboarding some of the most memorable Warner Bros. cartoons ever made, including "What's Opera Doc?," "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" and "One Froggy Evening."

Teddy Greenspan is a longtime art collector who does not suffer doubt. He is a bond salesman at Libertas Partners, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and he and his wife, Emily, recently created an art consulting company in Bedford, New York, called tag-arts. The pieces he sells average about $20,000, with a few selling for as much as $90,000; his clients, many of whom work in the financial fields, can well afford them. So you can imagine his frustration when dealing recently with a friend and potential client he calls "Mr. No-Name Hedge Fund Manager."

"He's in his 30s, probably worth 20-some million and feels poor because his personal net worth has gone down from 26 million since last summer," Greenspan said. "He buys a Park Avenue apartment for $7 million, spends another $7 million decorating it, and now he quibbles over $15,000 or $18,000 for a painting."

As an art consultant, Greenspan has encountered this kind of conflict before. "If you are in the process of decorating a home, you know what the sofa costs; you have a good idea of what wallpaper costs," he said, but art is different. "People don't like spending big numbers on things they don't understand. They understand the boat, the fur, the car, but for lack of homework or lack of taste, they just don't understand art."

Art paralysis: It is a widespread and often crippling malady, striking everyone from the new college grad in his or her first apartment to the super-rich banker, lasting anywhere from a few months to a lifetime. How many are affected is not known, perhaps because the victims are often too embarrassed to come forth. Who wants to admit that "I've had these posters since college, I know that as one of the American Top 10 Orthodontists I should get some real art, but I don't know what that means"? Or that "It's not that I'm trying to make a minimalist statement with these empty white walls, I just don't know what to buy"? Or "I walk into those snooty galleries in Chelsea and feel like I just don't belong"?

Oil paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet were stolen in broad daylight on Sunday from the private Buehrle Collection in the second dramatic art theft in the area within days. "This is the biggest robbery in Switzerland in an art museum and one of the biggest art robberies in Europe," said Peter Rueegger, head of investigations for the Zurich police.

Three men in dark clothing and masks, one of whom spoke German with a Slavic accent, forced their way into the museum and made off with the paintings in a white car, police said. A reward of 100,000 Swiss francs was on offer for information leading to their arrest, police added. Rueegger said the Zurich robbery could be compared to the theft of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from the Munch Museum in Oslo nearly four years ago. That work was recovered in 2006.

The robbery in Switzerland's financial capital follows the theft of two Picasso paintings -- Tete de Cheval, from 1962, and Verre et Pichet, from 1944 -- from a nearby cultural centre last week. They said it was possible a white vehicle had also played a role in this incident and that they would investigate whether the two thefts were connected. The four paintings stolen were Cezanne's "The Boy in the Red Vest" from 1890, Degas' "Viscount Lepic" and His Daughters from 1871, Monet's "Poppies Near Vetheuil" from 1880 and Van Gogh's "Blossoming Chestnut Branches" from 1890, police said.

London diamond dealer Laurence Graff is putting 30 works of art on the auction block, including some important contemporary pieces. Collector and philanthropist Louise Blouin MacBain just auctioned off $4.6 million worth of Hermès handbags, Manolo Blahnik shoes and furniture from two of her homes. And an anonymous European seller is parting with 29 pieces, including works by Andy Warhol, Edward Ruscha and furniture designer Marc Newson.

These sales -- and a host of other prominent works headed for the auction block in London in a few weeks -- are sending a ripple through the art market. With an unusual number of works up for sale, some dealers and collectors say they are concerned about signs of potential weakness in what has been a gravity-defying market for years now. Some dealers are referring to the series of London auctions that kicks off Oct. 12 as "Judgment Week" -- a potentially watershed moment. Market players will be watching the level of bidding for signs that a downturn is at hand.

The sheer volume of works planned for sale is fueling the nervous buzz. Christie's has estimated the works it will have on the block at its major London sales in October at $154 million -- compared with the $83 million it made at those sales last year and $33 million in 2005. Sotheby's is selling 387 works at its London auctions next month, compared with 254 last year and 206 the year before.

The London sales come at a time when the art market's anxiety level about a bursting bubble is reaching new heights. Turbulence in the financial markets has some collectors and dealers worried about Wall Street's woes spilling into the art world.

A Van Gogh masterpiece, which is believed to be the celebrated artist's final piece of work, will be put on the public market for the first time. It is already expected that the painting, known as "The Fields", will become one of the most highly valued paintings ever auctioned. Van Gogh completed "The Fields", also known as "Wheat Fields", on July 10, 1890, just 19 days before his death. The painting hung in his room as he bled to death in his bed, after having shot himself in a field and staggering home.

The Fields remains one of the few Van Gogh works to remain in private hands, and is often celebrated for shedding some light on the emotions that Van Gogh was feeling in his final days. It will be unveiled at Sotheby's in London next month on October 7, and will be sold at auction in New York a month later. The estimated list price is $34 million dollars. However, it is expected to go for much more than the list price, due to its importance and the currently booming art market. The Fields is expected to provoke one of the heaviest bidding wars.

A spokeswoman for Sotheby's said of the painting: "As a unique work of art from the final days of the artist's life, the price will most likely be driven by passion. This is perhaps the last opportunity for a collector to acquire a landscape of this quality by Vincent van Gogh."

Van Gogh's brother, Theo, was extremely emotionally attached to the painting. So much so that he kept it in the family collection for 20 years before his widow Johanna sold it to a private collector, Paul Cassirer, in 1907. Since then the painting has exchanged hands in private collections, but has never entered the public market. Although it has been disputed over the years as to which of Van Gogh's paintings was his last, a number of respected experts strongly believe that The Fields was his final artistic endeavor.

The Egyptian government has made a formal request to borrow the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum (BM). A letter was sent last month by Dr Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The Art Newspaper can reveal that the request is for a three-month loan in 2012, for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is being built near the Pyramids. Until now, the BM has been able to fend off questions about the return of the Rosetta Stone, since there had been no formal request.

Whether the loan is eventually granted is expected to depend on three main factors. First, conservation, and whether the 1,680 pound stone could be at risk. Secondly, if the Rosetta Stone can be lent in view of its iconic importance. It is probably the single most-visited object in the BM's entire collection, attracting even more visitors than the Parthenon Marbles. The Rosetta Stone has been at the museum since 1802, and has only left the building twice-when it was evacuated during World War I and when it was lent to the Louvre for one month in 1972.

Finally, there will concerns over whether it would be prudent to lend to Cairo, because of possible pressure in Egypt to retain the stone or request its permanent return. After receiving advice on these points, the request will be considered by the BM trustees.

In March, Dr Hawass told The Art Newspaper that he intends to seek the loan of five key masterpieces from international museums. The others are the head of Nefertiti (Berlin Museums), the Dendera zodiac ceiling (Louvre), the bust of Hemiunu, builder of the Great Pyramid (Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim, Germany), and the statue of Ankhaf, builder of the Khafre Pyramid (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). "I will give guarantees for their safe return," he promised.

A row has already broken out over Nefertiti, with the Berlin Museums arguing that the head is too fragile to travel. Dr Hawass warned last month that if the Berlin loan is refused, then "we will fight to bring back this bust for good."

Andy Warhol's painting "Green Car Crash," which graphically shows a car accident that includes the car's driver hanging impaled from a nearby street post, sold for $71.72 million Wednesday night to an anonymous buyer. The work was sold at Christie's in New York as part of an auction of postwar and contemporary art that took in a total of nearly $385 million, making it the second-most lucrative art auction ever held, according to the auction house.

"It was one of the most remarkable sales I've ever seen," Christie's honorary chairman Christopher Burge, who also served as auctioneer, told Reuters. "The market wasn't just hungry, it was ravenous." Only four of 78 works on offer failed to sell. Christie's had estimated that the Warhol would sell for $25 million to $35 million.

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Warhol stole the show at Christie's. His 1962 painting of Marilyn Monroe, known as "Lemon Marilyn" for its color, was expected to fetch $18 million but sold for $28 million. A similar work called "Orange Marilyn" sold for $16.5 million in November. The previous auction record for a Warhol work was $17.4 million, which was set when Christie's sold Warhol's iconic image of Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong for $17.4 million.

But the real showstopper was "Green Car Crash," part of a series of Warhol works that drew on photographs of fatal accidents. Silkscreened over a green background, the painting uses a news photograph of a grisly crash in Seattle. It had been in a private collection for decades, the auction house said. Sandy Heller, who advises collectors on purchases, said that while it "is a great piece," it is also "a very tough image" that some might find hard to live with. "It's hard to put an image of impaled figure in a burning car in a home where you have little kids," Heller said.

A U.S. collector who bought an Andy Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 for $250 is offering the painting for sale in May and can expect to fetch over $15 million, auctioneers Christie's said on Monday. "Lemon Marilyn" was one of 13 portraits the celebrity-obsessed artist made of Monroe after she committed suicide in August, 1962. "Orange Marilyn", another painting in the series, was sold for $16.3 million in 2006.

Christie's did not reveal the identity of the private collector, who bought the painting at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in New York, where Warhol held a one-man exhibition that included eight paintings in the series. The work will be on public display at Christie's in London from Monday until Wednesday, and will go on sale at auction on May 16 in New York.

The FBI's Art Crime Team says the painting turned up for sale in New York in 1989, the same year Spielberg bought it from a legitimate dealer. It was Spielberg's staff that alerted the FBI when they noticed the painting on a list of stolen art. "They were gracious and responsible to come forward with that information," Assistant Special Agent Tom Noble told ABC News.

Noble said Spielberg's staff allowed FBI experts to authenticate the painting, which shows children at their desks facing a bust of Lenin. The painting was worth about $20,000 when it was stolen. The FBI estimates it is worth about $700,000 today. "It is just wonderful that it has been found," said Laurie Norton, director of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. "It is good to know it was in safe hands, as Mr. Spielberg is a devoted and passionate collector of Norman Rockwell."

Spielberg is a trustee on the board of the Norman Rockwell Museum. Norton said it is not uncommon for stolen paintings to turn up after decades, since thieves often wait for a case to go cold before putting a painting on the market. The FBI is allowing Spielberg to keep the painting until it can be determined where it belongs.

Ellenshaw began his association with Walt Disney in 1947, when he was tapped to work on the Studio's first live-action film, "Treasure Island" (1950), and continued working there until his retirement in 1979 following "The Black Hole."

Commenting on Ellenshaw's passing, Roy E. Disney said, "Peter was a Disney legend in every sense of the word and played a vital role in the creation of many of the Studio's greatest live-action films from the very beginning. He was a brilliant and innovative visual effects pioneer who was able to consistently please my Uncle Walt, and push the boundaries of the medium to fantastic new heights. From his incredibly beautiful and effective matte paintings for films like 'Mary Poppins,' 'Treasure Island,' and '20,000 Leagues...,' to his landmark painting of the iconic Disneyland map, he was a true master of his art. Outside of the Studio, he was a fantastic painter in his own right, and I always loved his Irish paintings and felt that he did the best seascapes in the world."

Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin added, "Long before the era of modern special effects, Peter was working his magic in Disney films. People never knew how he accomplished his visual feats. 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People' remains one of the most amazing, eye-popping achievements in all of film history. And when you think that 'Mary Poppins' was made without anyone ever setting foot outside a soundstage -- let alone visiting London -- you get some idea of what he was able to pull off."

Craig Barron, president of Matte World Digital and co-author of the book The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Paintings, observed, "Ellenshaw's matte work was truly the stuff that movie magic dreams were made of. He took audiences on cinematic journeys to the most incredible places like Captain Nemo's volcanic island from '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,' or the fairy mountain cave of 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People,' or a tour of London's magical rooftops for 'Mary Poppins.' His matte painting work belongs to that unsung craft that's now virtually disappeared. With only a small crew, he created, almost single-handedly, incredible movie making locations with just the sublime artistry of brush strokes -- literally the 'art' in movies that generations of audiences have appreciated unawares, thanks to the skill of this great-departed movie artist."

Born in Great Britain in 1913, Ellenshaw began his film career in the early 1930s, when he apprenticed for visual effects pioneer W. Percy (Pop) Day, O.B.E. He worked on such productions as "Things to Come," "Rembrandt," "Elephant Boy," "Sixty Glorious Years," "A Matter of Life and Death," and the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classic "Black Narcissus."

After a stint as a pilot in the RAF during World War II, Ellenshaw created matte paintings for MGM's "Quo Vadis." In 1947, his work caught the attention of an art director for the Walt Disney Studios. Disney was in the pre- planning stages of his very first live-action film, "Treasure Island," which would be produced in Great Britain, and the art director inquired if Ellenshaw would be interested in the project. Thus began a professional collaboration and friendship with Walt Disney that would span over 30 years and 34 films.

Ellenshaw regarded Walt Disney as a source of inspiration, a wonderful executive, and over the years, a good friend. "Walt had the ability to communicate with artists," observed Ellenshaw. "He'd talk to you on your level -- artist to artist. He used to say, 'I can't draw, Peter.' But he had the soul of an artist, and he had a wonderful way of transferring his enthusiasm to you."

Among his many projects at Disney, Ellenshaw made major artistic contributions to the television shows "Davy Crockett" and "Zorro," and such classic feature films as "The Sword in the Rose," "The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men," "Darby O'Gill and the Little People," "Third Man on the Mountain," "Swiss Family Robinson," "The Love Bug," "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," and "The Black Hole." He officially retired from the Studio in 1979 but returned years later to paint several matte paintings for the 1990 film, "Dick Tracy." He was designated a "Disney Legend" in 1993.

In addition to his career in the motion picture industry, Ellenshaw became known as one of the finest marine artists of the past century known not only for his dramatic seascapes but his elegant Irish landscapes and vivid oils of the Himalayas and Monet's garden at Giverny.

Ellenshaw's beloved wife of 58 years, Bobbie, passed away in 2000. He is survived by his two children, Lynda Ellenshaw Thompson (an industry veteran visual effects producer), and Harrison Ellenshaw (a visual effects artist who was an Oscar nominee for "The Black Hole," matte supervisor on "Star Wars: Episodes IV and V" and visual effects supervisor for "Tron"), as well as his two grandchildren, Michael and Hilary. Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Direct Relief International, Santa Barbara, California.

Anita Halpin, 62, a stalwart Left-winger and chairman of the Communist Party of Britain, was given Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1913 Berliner Strassenszene (Berlin street scene) by the Berlin state senate in July. The move followed two years of secret negotiations after claims that it was stolen from her Jewish grandparents by the Gestapo in 1936. The painting had hung in Berlin's Brücke Museum for 26 years and formed the cornerstone of its Expressionist collection.

After frenzied bidding at Christie's Manhattan auction room this week, it was sold for £20.5 million to the Neue Galerie in New York. Attempts to keep in it Berlin had failed through lack of money. Mrs Halpin, who is also treasurer of the National Union of Journalists and sits on the TUC general council, was unwilling to discuss the sale yesterday. She also declined to comment on whether she would be pursuing claims for other paintings from the large collection said to have been taken from her grandparents, Alfred and Tekla Hess, the owners of a shoe factory. Asked what she would do with the windfall, Mrs Halpin, of Bow, east London, replied: "It's too early to call, let's leave it at that."

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They [the family's lawyers] say that Alfred Hess, his wife and their son Hans, a once wealthy Jewish family who lived in Erfurt, Germany, built up one of the most comprehensive collections of German Expressionist art, consisting of around 4,000 works, including some 80 paintings by the premier artists of the Expressionist period in Germany. "Alfred Hess died in late 1931. Following the rise of Hitler in 1933, the Hess family was eventually forced to leave Germany," they said when the painting was returned to Mrs Halpin.

Mrs Halpin's father, Hans, lost his job at the Ullstein publishing house in Berlin when it fired its Jewish employees, then fled to Paris and later to London. His mother moved to Bavaria where she was questioned by Gestapo agents about the whereabouts of the Hess collection. The lawyers have produced an affidavit signed by Tekla Hess in 1958 in which she stated that she had been coerced under threat by the Gestapo to return seven pictures in the Hess collection from the Swiss gallery where they were being kept to Germany. The collection was broken up and many other works remain lost. In the 1960s Hans Hess was found to be a Nazi persecutee and awarded 75,000 German marks for the loss of the collection — a mere fraction of its worth but the largest amount that could be awarded at that time.

That price, if officially confirmed, would be the highest sum ever known to have been paid for a painting, exceeding the $135 million that the cosmetics heir Ronald S. Lauder paid in June for Gustav Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I." The experts spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to be perceived as betraying the confidence of the seller or the buyer of the Pollock, "No. 5, 1948," or jeopardize future business.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Geffen declined to comment on whether he sold the painting. Tobias Meyer of Sotheby's is said to have brokered the deal. The art-world experts identified the buyer as David Martinez, the Mexican financier who bought a two-floor apartment in the south building of the Time Warner Center for $54.7 million recently.

Mr. Martinez did not return calls seeking comment. Obsessively private, he has emerged as a megabuyer in modern and contemporary art in recent years, snapping up works by masters like de Kooning and Rothko both privately and at auction. Just last month Mr. Geffen sold two other 20th-century paintings — a Jasper Johns and a Willem de Kooning — for a total of $143.5 million. Given that he is among many business figures who has expressed interest in buying The Los Angeles Times, media industry analysts speculated that he was trying to raise cash for a potential bid.

The Pollock, a densely tangled composition in browns and yellows, is unusually large, measuring about 4 by 8 feet, and was painted on fiberboard. Like much else in Mr. Geffen's collection, it comes with a pristine provenance. Previous owners include the painter Alfonso A. Ossorio, a major Pollock collector from East Hampton, N.Y., and S. I. Newhouse Jr., the publishing magnate, who sold it to Mr. Geffen.

Is there any way to fix the ripped Picasso? Yes, but it will be slow and tedious work. The torn ends of the canvas can probably be lined up, and conservators can identify matching fibers on either side of the rip by inspecting them under a microscope. In general, you can expect the wefts in the fabric—that is, the crosswise yarns of the weave—to split at the site of the impact. The lengthwise warps tend to get stretched out, but they may not break.

The rip itself can be mended in a few different ways. First, the conservator can line up the torn ends and affix them to a new piece of fabric that lines the back of the painting. She might also try to attach the torn ends to each other using a method called Rissverklebung, in which individual fibers are rewoven back into place.

To reweave the warps and wefts, you have to figure out the proper placement of each individual fiber. Bits of paint that are stuck to the fibers must be glued in place or removed until the reweaving is complete. (Conservators map out the location of each paint flake they remove so it can be replaced in precisely the right spot.) Because an accident will stretch out some fibers and fray others, you sometimes have to tie off and shorten some threads while attaching new material to lengthen others. Threads attached to the back of the canvas will reinforce the seam.

Closing the tear is only the first part of the process. An accident like Wynn's can damage the painting in other places by stretching the fabric and distorting the image. To correct for these planar distortions, the conservators try to change the lengths of individual fibers or small patches of the canvas. Applied humidity can make a fiber expand across its diameter and shrink across its length—and tighten up distended parts of the weave.

Photographs taken with invisible infrared light and a special infrared camera suggest that at least one of the details was hiding in plain sight, the scientists and conservators said. The sitter in the Louvre Museum's 16th-century masterpiece, believed to be Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant, was originally painted wearing a large transparent overdress made from gauze, they said. Under normal light, part of the garment is visible on the right-hand side of the painting, but appears simply to be part of the background. "You can see it when you know what you're looking for," said Bruno Mottin, a curator in the research department of the Center of Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, known as C2RMF.

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Mr. Mottin said such transparent robes were worn by expecting or nursing mothers in 16th-century Italy. The robe's reappearance in the "Mona Lisa" would dovetail with scholarly research indicating that the painting might have been commissioned to commemorate the birth of Lisa Gherardini's third child. The imaging also shows, although less clearly, that some of the sitter's hair was rolled into a small bun and tucked under a tiny bonnet with an attached veil. (The images are too cloudy to be reproduced on newsprint.) "That is not surprising," Mr. Mottin said. "The bonnet was usually worn by women in the 16th century." More generally, the researchers said they realized that centuries of grime had obscured some elements of the painting.

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While the "Mona Lisa" has become famous for the sitter's calm, some say enigmatic, smile, it appears that the composition was not always so restful. For example, the new images show that at one point one of her hands was painted in a clenched rather than a relaxed position. "It was as if she was going to get up from a chair," Mr. Mottin said of the version Leonardo ultimately changed.

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Among other cutting-edge technologies, the scientists used a newly developed Canadian laser camera to construct an extremely detailed three-dimensional model of the painting. It reveals that while the "Mona Lisa" may be old and dirty, it is not, as had long been thought, particularly fragile. "We have a good handle on the physical state of the painting," Mr. Taylor said. While the wood panel on which it is painted is quite warped at points, he said, the 3-D model shows that it is sound and that the paint remains well bonded to its surface.

Angelina Jolie doesn't just adopt malnourished children - she spends hundreds of thousands of dollars for weird art pieces of them. Star magazine reports that the movie siren and mother of three - two adopted kids, one from Cambodia, one from Africa and a biological daughter named Shiloh - stopped by a Los Angeles warehouse and blew almost $400,000 on three pieces by in-your-face Brit artist Banksy.

A $226,000 painting - titled "Picnic" - depicts a white family of four merrily lunching under an umbrella on a red checked blanket while 15 starving Africans - including several children with distended bellies - look on. A $75,000 purchase - a white bust with a bleeding bullet hole in the forehead - was a particular favorite of Jolie's. "She went nuts for that one," an onlooker told the mag. "She told [her baby daddy], 'I must have that one.'"

For another cool $75,000, she picked up a portrait of a man hit in the head with a custard pie.

An elephant that was elaborately spray-painted for a California art exhibit, which caused an uproar among animal activists, was washed by order of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services.

The 38-year-old female elephant, named Tai, was given a nontoxic paint job for last week's opening of the "Barely Legal" exhibit by British artist Banksy. The elephant was painted in the same red and gold pattern as the exhibit's walls, and she was placed in a living room that included furniture. Ed Boks, head of the city's Animal Services Department, ordered Sunday that the elephant be completely scrubbed down to bare skin and that a child-safe face paint be used.

"The paint they had been using, although nontoxic, according to government regulations was unsafe and even illegal to use the way they had been using it," Boks said. On Sunday, Tai was placed unpainted in the living room exhibit. "Well, it's better than being painted," said Bill Dyer from In Defense of Animals, who objected to the use of the animal in the exhibit.

Police remained tightlipped over how they recovered the national treasures Thursday. Munch Museum director Ingebjoerg Ydstie said "The Scream" had been banged hard in one corner and "Madonna" had a roughly one-inch hole and some loose paint.

"Our skilled conservators will be able to repair the damage," she said. "The Scream" is probably the best known of Munch’s emotionally charged works and was a major influence on the Expressionist movement. In four versions of the painting, a waif-like figure is apparently screaming or hearing a scream. The image has become a modern icon of human anxiety.

"The Scream" and "Madonna" were stolen in a brazen daylight raid on the Oslo city-owned Munch Museum on Aug. 22, 2004. Police announced their recovery but refused to say how they found the paintings. Almost two weeks ago, the Norwegian news media began reporting that David Toska, considered the mastermind of one of Norway’s most notorious bank robberies, was secretly negotiating with police for the return of the paintings.

The reports, citing anonymous sources, said he wanted milder terms in a 21-year prison sentence. Police refused comment. During the trial of three suspects in the Munch theft, prosecutors suggested the paintings were stolen to draw police focus away from solving the commando-style bank robbery four months earlier that left a police officer dead in the western city of Stavanger. Thirteen men were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in the robbery of Norsk Kontantsevice, or NOKAS. Their appeal begins Monday. Leif A. Lier, now a private investigator, headed the police inquiry that led to the recovery of another version of "The Scream" that was stolen in 1994.

All Shook Up's Christopher Ashley is set to direct a new musical production of Xanadu — based on the 1980 film of the same name — Off-Broadway in spring 2007.

Douglas Carter Beane will pen the book for the production, which will be produced by Robert Ahrens. The musical will utilize songs from the movie's soundtrack. The film featured tunes by John Farrar and Jeff Lynne, including "Xanadu," "All Over the World," "I'm Alive," "Magic" and "Suddenly."

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane is the author of The Little Dog Laughed, As Bees in Honey Drown, The Country Club, Music From a Sparkling Planet, Advice From a Caterpillar, White Lies and Devil May Care and Old Money. Director Christopher Ashley has directed All Shook Up, The Smell of the Kill, Voices in the Dark, Princesses, As Thousands Cheers, The Country Club, Rude Entertainment, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Jeffrey, Blown Sideways Through Life, Fires in the Mirror, Bunny Bunny and Das Barbecu.

The Austrian government has not yet commented on the decision to return the Klimt paintings. But a lawyer for Mrs Altmann told the BBC the ruling was binding and final. Art Nouveau master Klimt is one of Austria's most celebrated painters. The paintings include one of his most famous works, a portrait of Mrs Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer.

When Adele died in 1925, she left a will asking her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, to leave the works to the Austrian Gallery upon his death. But when the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, Mr Bloch-Bauer and his niece were forced to flee for their lives. The paintings were seized and put on display in a Vienna museum where they remain to this day. There has been a long legal battle over ownership of the paintings, which went all the way to the US Supreme Court.

The decision by the arbitration court in Vienna now paves the way for one of the largest post-war restitution settlements in Austria. In April 2005, Mrs Altmann was part of a group which received $21.9m (£11.9m) from a Swiss bank fund set up to compensate heirs of Nazi victims. Her family, major shareholders in an Austrian sugar refinery before World War II, had their savings plundered from a Swiss bank by the Nazis.