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
Madonna (Munch painting) not known as a Christian. The affinity to Mary might as well be intended nevertheless, as an emphasis on the beauty and perfection of his friend Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska, the model for the work, and an expression of his worship of her as an ideal of womanhood. Werner Hofmann suggests that the painting is a "strange devotional picture glorifying decadent love. The cult of the strong woman who reduces man to subjection gives the figure of woman monumental proportions, but it also makes a demon of her." Sigrun Rafter, an art historian at the Oslo National Gallery suggests that Munch intended