ROME --Italian police on Friday recovered the stolen oil painting of a naked woman by French master Pierre-Auguste Renoir, nabbed from a private collection 33 years ago, and arrested three suspects.

Police were acting on a tip-off from a prominent art critic, Vittorio Sgarbi, who had been contacted by an art gallery owner in the Italian city of Riccione for a valuation of the Impressionist master's work.

Police arrested the gallery owner and two other suspects.

The Renoir, valued at 500,000 euros ($730,000), was recovered along with a forgery of a work by Edouard Manet which Sgarbi had also been asked to appraise, said local police chief Giovanni Nistri.

The Renoir nude was stolen from a Milanese family in 1975 and the owner's daughter recognized the authenticity of the recovered work due to the mark of a ball she hit it with in the early 1970s, the ANSA news agency reported.