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Goya painting carjacked

Children in a cart painted by Spanish master Francisco Goya was stolen last week while traveling from Ohio`s Toledo Museum of Art to New York`s Guggenheim. The painting was stolen from a van which was on a route through the backwater of Scranton in Pennsylvania, well away from the main interstate highway 80 that led to its destination, New York.

The 1776 painting was being carried by a professional art transporter at the time it was stolen. The insurer is offering up to $50,000 for information leading to its recovery, and the FBI is currently leading an investigation. The painting was planned to appear at an exhibit scheduled to open Sunday called "Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History."

The work was one of Goya`s first royal commissions. It was intended as a template for one of a series of tapestries to be woven by the royal tapestry factory at Santa Barbara in Spain. It remained at the factory until about 1850, when it was transferred to the royal palace in Madrid, later passing through dealers in London and Boston and ending up in Toledo in 1959.