It’s surely the most expensive item ever carried in an IKEA bag.

A Dutch “art detective” has recovered an early masterpiece by Vincent van Gogh stolen from a museum three years ago after it was handed in at his Amsterdam home—wrapped in a trademark blue IKEA bag.

Regulars at the Swedish retail giant will have used the bags to carry odds and ends picked up on the long trudge around the store: Jämlik candles, perhaps, or Huvudroll meatballs.

But Arthur Brand, known as “the Indiana Jones of the art world” for his success in recovering missing on stolen works of art, unwrapped the bag to discover Van Gogh's 1884 Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, valued at around $6 million.

“We have searched for it for more than three-and-a-half years but finally it is here,” Brand said, showing off the painting in an Instagram clip.

“It’s back, and I'm going to hand it over in a couple of minutes to the museum director. And then I’m going to have a drink with all the police officers who were involved in recovering this beautiful piece by Vincent Van Gogh.”

The painting was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam on March 30, 2020—Van Gogh’s birthday—shortly after Europe went into lockdown for the coronavirus pandemic. The thief smashed through a glass door in the dead of night and was seen on video footage running away with the painting tucked under his arm.

A man identified only as Nils M. was arrested the following April and later sentenced to eight years in jail for the theft of the Van Gogh and an earlier heist in which he stole a Frans Hals masterpiece, The Two Laughing Boys.

The Van Gogh had not been recovered, despite the best efforts of Brand and his friends in the police force.

Brand told the AFP news agency that he heard several months later from a “a source in the criminal world” who had bought the Van Gogh from the thief. But the buyer, identified only as Peter Roy K., was already in jail after being convicted of importing and exporting large amounts of cocaine.

Brand said K. had wanted to use the painting as bargaining chip to get a reduced sentence but no deal had been done and the painting remained on the missing list.

Then, two weeks ago, Brand received a phone call from another man who, he said, “had nothing to do with the theft” and was persuaded to return the painting.

“The man told me ‘I want to return the Van Gogh. It has caused a massive headache,’” he said. “In an operation done in close coordination with the Dutch police, we got the painting back.”

Brand’s earlier successes including the recovery of bronze statues known as “Hitler’s Horses” and a Picasso painting.

A clip showing his surprise when he pulled the Van Gogh from its IKEA bag wrapping suggested that this might be his greatest triumph.

The painting has been returned to the Groninger Museum, which had loaned it to the Singer Karen Museum before it was stolen.