Madonna (Munch painting) a private home in Drammen, Norway. The fourth had been located the previous day in a private home in nearby Sande. During the court trials, Ole Christian Bach was suspected of having organized both the theft and the handling. In September 1992, Bach was sentenced to prison for seven months for handling stolen goods. On Sunday, 22 August 2004, the Munch Museum's versions of "Madonna" and "The Scream" were stolen by masked men wielding firearms. The thieves forced the museum guards to lie down on the floor while they snapped the cable securing the paintings to the wall and escaped
Edvard Munch and he was finally able to provide for his family. The outbreak of World War I found Munch with divided loyalties, as he stated, "All my friends are German but it is France that I love." In the 1930s, his German patrons, many Jewish, lost their fortunes and some their lives during the rise of the Nazi movement. Munch found Norwegian printers to substitute for the Germans who had been printing his graphic work. Given his poor health history, during 1918 Munch felt himself lucky to have survived a bout of the Spanish flu, the worldwide pandemic of that year.