ART/AUCTIONS

Masterpiece Returned: The U.S. Customs Service has handed over to the Spanish government a 17th-Century painting by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens that was seized last year in Miami in a sting operation. “La Aurora (The Dawn)” was confiscated after smugglers tried to sell it for $3 million to a customs agent posing as an art dealer’s representative. The 5x7-inch oil on wood will be returned within a week to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Galicia, from which it was stolen in 1985.