Measuring 15.7 inches (40 cm) tall, the statue was tracked down by Dutch art detective Arthur Brand. A bit of a celebrity, it is not unusual to hear him called "the Indiana Jones of the art world." Indeed, Brand has contributed to the recovery of numerous stolen treasures including Pablo Picasso’s Buste de Femme, Salvador Dalí’s Adolescence, and a ring that once belonged to Oscar Wilde.
In a statement to the BBC, Brand admitted the rarity of this latest long-lost find, saying, “fifty years after a theft it's unheard of that something comes back—normally it's been destroyed.”
While a copy has been on display at the museum in the decades since its theft, little other visual documentation of it existed. And, of course, it doesn't help that any fifty-year-old theft occurred before the creation of international databases of stolen art.