Chagall painting held for unusual ransom

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Federal agents and police are investigating an unusual ransom note for a recently stolen $1 million painting by the late Russian-born artist Marc Chagall.

"The essence of the text was: You get the painting back when peace has been achieved between Israel and Palestine,'' FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said.

The missing painting from 1914 is an 8-by-10-inch oil called "Study for 'Over Vitebsk,'" Chagall's hometown, now in post-Soviet Belarus. The painting was among more than 50 works completed by 1920 that went on display at Manhattan's Jewish Museum in April as part of an exhibit on Chagall's early works in Russian collections. The exhibit runs through October.

The painting shows an old man wearing a cap, carrying a walking stick and beggar's sack, and floating in the sky above the village. Loaned from a private collector in St. Petersburg, the painting was stolen in June in a theft that was reported at the time.

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The museum maintains its offer of a $25,000 reward for information leading to the painting's recovery. The typewritten, one-page letter claiming responsibility for the theft was postmarked in the Bronx on June 12, four days after the museum discovered the theft.

"We believe the letter was sent by someone who knows where the painting is, if the letter writer didn't have it him or herself," Margolin said.

The letter was signed by a previously unknown group, the "International Committee for Art and Peace." Neither the FBI nor the museum would release a copy of it.

"The letter was very brief. It didn't go into specific demands on what the museum could or ought to do," Margolin said. More than 700 Palestinians and Israelis have died in a string of clashes and suicide bombings that began last September.

The New York City Police Department is working with the FBI's art theft and fraud unit on the investigation.

"We're very distressed about the missing Chagall painting," said Anne Scher, a museum spokeswoman. "The letter gave us some hope about the possible recovery," she said.

Chagall, who left Russia in 1922 and settled in France, died in 1985 at the age of 98. Many of his paintings depict Jewish folklore and scenes of pre-World War I life in Russia.