A stolen Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece worth up to £25 million was recovered yesterday more than four years after it was stolen in a daylight raid at a Scottish castle.

Police said that they had recovered the 500-year-old Madonna with the Yarnwinder in the Glasgow area after a multi-agency operation. Three men from Lancashire and another from Glasgow were arrested.

The art world, which had long given up hope of the painting being found, was jubilant last night after it was authenticated by experts.

Detective Chief Inspector Mickey Dalgleish, of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, said: “We are extremely pleased to recover the painting. Through careful investigations and intelligence-led police work we were able to locate the painting and make four arrests.” Four men have been charged and will appear at Dumfries Sheriff Court today.

The operation is believed to have been the culmination of an investigation involving the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and Strathclyde Police.

Police said that, acting on intelligence, they intercepted a meeting between five people in the centre of Glasgow at about 11am yesterday. The painting was recovered at the scene. They refused to comment on newspaper reports that the painting was recovered at a Glasgow solicitors’ office.

The Daily Record reported that the artwork was found after a swoop on HBJ Gateley Wareing in the city’s West Regent Street.

A spokesman for the commercial law firm told the newspaper: “There is absolutely no impropriety whatsoever.There is an interesting, but benign, explanation, but no wrongdoing has been done on their part.”

The masterpiece, which features the Madonna and infant Jesus with a cross-shaped yarnwinder, was stolen in August 2003 in one of the most audacious art robberies in many years.

Two men walked unchallenged during daylight into Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries and Galloway, one of three stately homes owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, Britain’s biggest private landowner, and stole the painting.

The men joined a tour of the castle and overpowered a woman member of staff before pulling the painting from the wall. They then left through a kitchen window and escaped with two accomplices in a Volkswagen Golf.

Although the Buccleuch family was said to be delighted by the recovery, they will regret that it happened just a month after the death at 83 of the Duke of Buccleuch, the former Tory MP for whom the painting was a particular treasure. The painting had been in the family’s possession for nearly 250 years.

Art experts said yesterday that they had not expected it to be recovered, despite the offer of a £1 million reward.

The painting, believed to have been painted in 1501, was on the FBI’s top ten list of stolen works of art.

Rogues’ gallery

–– The Crucifixion by DalÍ. Worth £150,000, it was a gift to Riker’s Island prison inmates in New York in 1965. Stolen in 2003.

–– The Concert by Vermeer. Stolen from a Boston museum in 1990 by robbers dressed as police.

–– The Scream and Madonna by Munch. Masked gunmen took both from an Oslo gallery in 2004. Both were found last year.

–– Nature Morte à La Charlotte by Picasso. Worth up to £2 million. Stolen from Paris’s Pompidou Centre in 2004. Found in 2005 behind a wardrobe in a Paris house.

–– Head of a Woman (Dora Maar), by Picasso. Worth £4 million and stolen from a Saudi yacht off Antibes on the French Riviera in 1999. It has not been recovered.

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette