OSLO, NORWAY.- A third man has been arrested and charged for the theft of Edvard Munch's work The Scream by Norwegian police. Back in August 2004 two armed and masked men stole The Madonna and The Scream from the Munch Museum in Oslo.

Police lawyer Morten Hojem Ervik said, "We stress that the paintings have not been recovered but we are optimistic that they will be found."

The Scream and Madonna in the Munch Museum collection were in the artist's possession when he died in 1944, and part of his great bequest to the City of Oslo. The Scream in the Munch Museum is one of two painted versions of the image. The other is to be found in the National Gallery, Oslo. The National Gallery version is signed and dated 1893, and many scholars believe this to be the first one. Both versions are painted on cardboard, and Munch has also sketched the image on the reverse side of the National Gallery version. The Scream - one of the two versions - was first exhibited at Unter den Linden in Berlin in December 1893. In 1895 an important version of the image was produced as a lithograph. There exist two pastels of the image, one belonging to the Munch Museum, the other privately owned. There are also a few sketches related to The Scream on a sheet of paper in the Munch Museum collection.