The United Kingdom: August 1961
Charles Wrightsman, the oil-rich American collector, bought Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" for $392,000 in 1961 and planned to take it stateside. Such was the public outrage that the government raised the necessary matching sum. Less than three weeks after its triumphal hanging in the
National Gallery, it was
stolen. The thief demanded a ransom of the same amount and said he was going to devote it to charity. There was no response--unless you count the double take when James Bond (Sean Connery) spotted the painting on the wall of Dr. No.
Italy: February 1975
Italy, the home of
art, has also been the home of art
theft. When two
paintings by Piero della Francesco, "The Flagellation of Christ" and "The Madonna of Senigallia," and a Raphael, "The Mute," were cut from their frames and stolen from the Ducal Palace in Urbino, it was described as "the art crime of the century." This phrase would prove to have legs. The crime was wholly driven by profit. It was committed by local criminals who planned to sell the works on the international market and would not be the last to discover that much-reproduced masterworks are hopelessly illiquid. The paintings were
recovered undamaged in Locarno, Switzerland, in March 1976.
France: November 1985
The theft of nine paintings, including Renoir's "Bathers" and Monet's "Impression, Soleil Levant" , which gave Impressionism its name, from the Marmottan
Museum in Paris took place on Sunday. The police at first theorized that the radical group Action Direct had committed the crime. But several paintings stolen from a provincial French museum in early 1984 were recovered in Japan after a tip-off from a fence. The paintings--including Corots--were in the hands of Shuinichi Fujikuma, a known gangster. He had been behind the Marmottan heist too. Indeed, he had circulated a catalog of the nine soon to be stolen paintings.
Japan's short statute of limitations on stolen art was notorious, and rumors became rampant that the Japanese mob, aka the Yakuza, had penetrated the art world. The truth was on a smaller scale. Fujikuma had been arrested in France with 7.8 kilos of heroin in 1978. During a five-year sentence, he came to know Philippe Jamin and Youssef Khimoun, members of an art theft syndicate. They pulled the job for him. But the paintings were recovered in 1991--in Corsica. They had been too hot, even for Japan.
Mexico: December 1985
It was Christmas Eve, and the eight guards at Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology were not vigilant. Nor was it helpful that the alarm hadn't been working since the system broke down three years before. It was the new team of guards who arrived at 8 A.M. and discovered that sheets of glass had been removed from seven showcases. The 140 objects that were taken included jade and gold pieces from the Maya, Aztec, Zapotec and Miztec sculptures (pictured is "Pacal's Burial Mask"). The curator, Felipe Solis, estimated that one piece alone--a vase shaped like a monkey--could be worth over $20 million on the market--if a buyer could be found.
Most of the pieces were an inch or so in height. The entire haul would have fitted comfortably into a couple of suitcases. It is still considered the single largest theft of precious objects.
The lessons were few--but obvious. National museums, especially in the Third World, often have security woefully inadequate to their contents. And not everybody on a holiday is just out celebrating
More summaries about the World's Greatest Art Thefts