By Salome Zaalishvili
This Sunday morning 9 Imperial Jewels were stolen from the Louvre, one of the world's most famous Galleries. The heist that lasted just 7 minutes has shocked the entire world, but despite the sensational nature of the event, it is not the only art heist in the recent history, nor is it the most expensive.
Just in the last two months, a Picasso painting has disappeared in Spain, a 3000 year old bracelet was stolen in Cairo and 600 000 euros worth of gold was stolen from a natural history museum in Paris.
Let’s take a look at the greatest art heists in recent history, that involved amateurs, expert thieves and in some cases even the dark world of organized crime. Some stolen works have thankfully been recovered while some heists have ended with no hope of ever recovering the stolen art.
Theft in Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
A pamphlet from the official US Government website requesting information on the whereabouts of of the stolen paintings
At 1:24 AM on March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as police officers incapacitated and bound the two on duty security guards, just Eighty-one minutes later, the thieves exited the building with 13 works of art valued at $500 million. According to a statement made by the FBI in 2021 the stolen artworks have not been recovered. As such to this day, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist remains the largest unsolved art theft in history. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s unique will prohibits rearranging the museum’s artworks. As a result, museum visitors can see the empty spots where the stolen works were once displayed.
Mona Lisa’s short voyage to Italy
Mona Lisa in Paris in 1914 after being returned from Italy
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is undoubtedly the most famous work ever stolen, but when the painting went missing from the Louvre in 1911, the painting was little known beyond the professional art world. Twenty-eight hours passed before anyone even noticed it was missing. After the theft was discovered, the Mona Lisa became a media sensation. For over two years, newspapers covered the international police hunt for the painting. The painting was finally recovered when Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia attempted to sell it in Florence. Peruggia reportedly believed he was a hero for returning the Mona Lisa to his home country, even if it was for a very short time.
Whitworth Art Gallery and a kind thief
The room the paintings were stolen from and the note found with the paintings two days after the heist
While most art thieves steal for money, some apparently just want to be helpful. In 2003, three watercolors by Van Gogh, Picasso, and Gauguin were stolen from the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Thanks to an anonymous tip, the paintings were found just two days later inside a public restroom in a local park. Law enforcement discovered a handwritten note which read, “the intention was not to steal. only to highlight the woeful security.”
How a Klimt painting was discovered inside one of the Modern Art Gallery walls years after it was stolen
Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady next to the 1910 painting hiding under it
Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady (1916–17) is considered key by scholars because it’s the only work by Klimt that hides another earlier painting beneath it. In 1997, the painting went missing during preparations for a show at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Piacenza, Italy.
The $60 million painting was considered lost for more than two decades and it wasn’t until 2019 when a gardener pruning ivy at the gallery discovered the work, half-hidden in a trash bag behind a panel in the building.
Two men who are believed to be connected to other Italian art heists later confessed in a letter to an Italian journalist to having stolen the Klimt, which they said they concealed in the gallery’s exterior four years after having pilfered it. In the letter, the men, who remain at large, said they ultimately returned the work “as a gift to the city”.
“Scream” Disappeared
The “Scream” being examined for damaged after having been returned to the Gallery
If the Mona Lisa is the most iconic stolen artwork, then Edvard Munch’s The Scream is undoubtedly the second in the list. On February 12, 1994, two thieves broke through a window of Norway’s National Gallery, cut a wire holding the painting to the wall, and left a note which read, “Thousand thanks for the bad security!” The Norwegian government received a $1 million ransom demand, which it declined to pay without proof of its legitimacy. Fortunately, the painting was recovered three months later.
Another version of The Scream was stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004 and recovered in 2006.
Spider Man inside the Paris Museum of Modern Art
Portrait of Lunia Czechowska with a Fan
Amedeo Modigliani
Art thief Vjeran Tomic earned the nickname “Spider-Man” by climbing into Parisian apartments and museums to steal valuable jewelry and artworks. Tomic and two accomplices were arrested for stealing works by Henry Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and a Amaeeo Modigliani from the Musée d’Art Moderne in 2010. According to sources the heist was orchestrated by antiques dealer Jean-Michel Corvez. Though Tomic was only ordered to steal the Léger, he decided mid-heist to steal the other four works because he liked them. Despite arresting the perpetrators, none of the works have been recovered.
Monkey and the Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum located in Amsterdam
Spider-Man is not the only thief with a nickname and a particular passion for scaling buildings. On December 7, 2002, Octave Durham, also known as “the Monkey,” and Henk Bieslijn used a ladder to scale the side of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. They then smashed one of the windows with a sledgehammer, climbed inside the building, and took two paintings: Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884-85) and View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882). Though both thieves were arrested the following year, neither revealed the whereabouts of the paintings. It was not until 2016 that law enforcement officials recovered the works from one of the homes owned by the Camorra crime family.
“Take away”Rembrandt
Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III
Rembrandt
In 2006, Guinness World Records awarded Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III the title of “Most Stolen Painting.” The painting earned the award, as well as the nickname “Takeaway Rembrandt,” after being stolen four times in the last 53 years. After being stolen for the first time in 1966, three more thefts occurred in 1973, 1981, and 1983. At different times the painting has been found on a luggage rack at a railway station in Munster, on the back of a bicycle, and underneath a bench in a graveyard. Today, the Takeaway Rembrandt can be found hanging in the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, thankfully no efforts to steal it again has been made in the last 40 years.
Hollywood heist at the Ashmolean Museum
The glass skylight can be seen from the restaurant terrace located on top of the museum building
Despite the elaborate heist scenes we’ve so often seen on large theater screens, few real-life art thefts are an impressive affair. However, a theft at the oldest public museum in Britain - the Ashmolean Museum proves that life occasionally imitates art. While everyone else celebrated the New Year, on January 1, 2000, an intruder smashed through a skylight, lowered themselves down a rope, and tossed a smoke canister onto the floor. Smoke obscured security cameras as they removed Cézanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise(1875). The thief walked off with the $4.8 million painting less than ten minutes later.
Forgeries at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
Some of the paintings that were replaced with forgeries by the Academy librarian
In 2015 Xiao Yuan, a librarian at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts admitted to replacing 143 artworks with his own forgeries. Yuan reportedly made $6 million selling 125 stolen works at auction. Upon confessing, Yuan not only claimed that art theft was common at the Academy, but also maintained that his own forgeries had been stolen and replaced with lesser-quality fakes.
The Van Gogh that disappeared during the pandemic
Dutch art detective Arthur Brand showing the stolen painting that he recovered
In March of 2020, when almost the entire world was forced to quarantine due to the Covid 19 pandemic, the majority of the largest museums in Europe and the United States closed their doors for the visitors. While the museum stayed empty thieves walked off with a priceless early Vincent van Gogh painting.The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884), had been on loan from another Dutch institution, the Groninger Museum, and it was removed by a robber who broke into the museum using a sledgehammer and got past various layers of security. The painting has sadly not been recovered yet.
Thieves take $1.2 billion in jewelry from a famed Dresden museum
One of the rooms of Grünes Gewölbe or Green Vault Museum that the works were taken from
The Dresden jewelry heist, one of the largest art thefts ever committed, took place largely over the course of a single minute. At 4 a.m., thieves cut the power at the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) museum and made off with riches that have been valued at $1.2 billion by smashing an axe into a glass display case. Among the works stolen are some of the most famous jewelry objects in the world—including a sword encrusted with 800 diamonds and the 49.84-carat Dresden White Diamond. By the end of 2020, four were arrested for the heist, though German police were still on the hunt for the jewels, which were still not recovered by the start of 2021. The stolen pieces were finally recovered in 2022, they were returned to the museum and have since been put back on display.
Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers go missing from a Museum in Cairo
Poppy Flowers
Vincent Van Gogh
If you’re in need of extra money and happen to know the whereabouts of Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers (1887), Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is offering a $175,000 reward to anyone with information leading to the painting’s recovery.
Poppy Flowers was first stolen in 1977 and recovered ten years later. The painting was returned to the Mohamed Khalil Museum and put back on display, but it was soon stolen a second time in 2010. The thief reportedly pushed a couch against the wall to cut the painting from its frame, then disappeared from the museum with the painting in hand in broad daylight.
