ART HEISTS — SILVIA TODHE

More compelling than old Hollywood glamor of the silver screen – discover the spectacular stories behind the world’s greatest art heists.

Art heists on the silver screen have always captivated audiences worldwide so much so that just the thought of art theft has us conjuring images of old Hollywood glamor like Audrey Hepburn in ‘How to Steal a Million’ (1966) or the more recent film by Steven Soderbergh, ‘Ocean’s Twelve’ (2004).

Despite the security measures in high-profile museums, art heists have been happening for decades and some would argue that real art heists are even more spectacular than their fictional counterparts.

While most thieves are motivated by the millions these master works are worth, some of them steal pieces by artists they personally know or admire – instead of the artist’s reputation in the art world or theoretical value of their work.

Unfortunately, the instant recognizably of these stolen masterpieces makes them so difficult to sell that even the potent black market isn’t interested in them. With only a small percentage of stolen art ever recovered – (an estimated 10%), real art heists have tragic repercussions for the art world and history as the world’s greatest art typically end up lost forever.

Let’s look back at some of the world's greatest art heists (excluding the large-scale art thefts by the Nazis during World War II and the Russian looting of Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine):

THE MONA LISA THEFT (1911)

The most famous art heist of all time happened in 1911, when a former employee of the Louvre Museum in Paris stole the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The painting remained hidden in his apartment for two years before being caught.

OLD MASTERS LONDON MUSEUM THEFT (1966)

Rembrandt’s painting of Jacob de Gheyn III (1632) has been renamed by The Guinness Book of World Records because it has been stolen so many times. It was stolen first in 1973, then in 1981, and next in 1983. Its most recent theft was in 1966 from the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London by thieves who also removed works by Peter Paul Rubens, Gerard Dou, and Adam Elsheimer, along with two other Rembrandts.

The thieves, one of whom was eventually convicted, had hoped to sell the work on the black market, but police recovered it not long after, and the painting is still on view at the museum today.

Rembrandt van Rijn, *Jacob de Gheyn III*, 1632.
Photo : Dulwich Picture Gallery

SAN LORENZO CARAVIAGGIO THEFT (1969)

In 1969 thieves stole Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (dating back to 1600-1609) from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy. There was hope in finding the masterwork when in 2017 Italy’s anti-Mafia commission reopened the case but with their new lead – now deceased – the Swiss art dealer informed the commission that he advised the thieves to cut up the canvas, since no one would purchase a work so famous. As of 2021, the search for the painting continues.

Caravaggio, *Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence*, 1600 or 1609.
Photo : Via Wikimedia Commons

SIR ALFRED AND LADY BEIT THEFT (1974)

In 1974, members of the Irish Republican Army banded together to rob the Russborough House, the Irish home of Sir Albert Beit, a British politician. Having tied up Beit, they took $20 million in art by Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, and Peter Paul Rubens, which they later held out for ransom and were hoping to exchange for the release of IRA members who had been imprisoned for car bombings.

Bridget Rose Dugdale, the daughter of a British millionaire, was later sentenced to nine years in prison after three paintings were found in her cottage. Pleading “proudly and incorruptibly guilty” in court, Dugdale said that the theft was a protest the British government’s desire “to deprive us of our freedom to fight for Ireland and the freedom of the Irish people.” Some of the works Dugdale pilfered were stolen once again, for reasons of a less activist nature, in 1986, 2000, and 2001.

Sir Alfred and Lady Beit.
Photo : AP Photo

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY THEFT (1985)

The most notorious heist in Mexican history, was in 1985 when a group of thieves stole the priceless Aztec and Mayan artifacts from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Many of the stolen artifacts have never been recovered.

The National Museum of Archaeology in Mexico City.
Photo : AP

IMPRESSIONIST MASTERPIECIES IN PARIS THEFT (1985)

In one of the world’s most daring heists ever committed anywhere, the artwork that gave its name to the Impressionist Art Movement was stolen from Paris’s Musée Marmottan in1985. The thieves stole the work in broad daylight, having bought tickets like everyone else, they took Claude Monet’s iconic 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise, along with works by Berthe Morisot and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Nine guards and 40 visitors were held at gunpoint as some of the works were yanked from gallery walls. Although the nine stolen works were valued at $20 million, some said that Impression, Sunrise was priceless. In 1990, all nine works were recovered at a villa in Corsica, and seven people were arrested.

Claude Monet, *Impression, Sunrise*, 1872.
Photo : Francois Mori/AP

THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM THEFT (1990)

The theft of 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston remains one of the largest art heists in history. The stolen pieces included paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas, and have never been recovered.

In the early morning, on the day after St. Patrick’s Day, thieves entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, subduing guards who were watching the Boston institution’s grounds at night.

In the hours that followed, the thieves walked away with riches of almost incalculable art-historical value: The Concert (ca. 1664), one of just 34 known Vermeer paintings; a 1633 Rembrandt painting featuring a boat navigating stormy waters; a Manet painting of a mysterious man in a café.

The FBI has said the works, which are still missing as of 2021, are valued at a collected $500 million. Because so much mystery surrounds the case, the heist continues to capture the minds of many, with some suggesting that the mob was involved, or that the guards were in on it, or that the works have indeed been destroyed.

Today, officials at the museum are unsure about the works’ whereabouts. In 2020, curator Ronni Baer told WBUR, “I wish I could somehow comfort myself in knowing they’re somewhere, but I don’t know if they still exist.”

Empty frames at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Photo : Josh Reynolds, File/AP

GALLERIA D’ARTE MODERNA KLIMT THEFT (1997)

Scholars consider Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady (1916–17) as an important work of art in art history as it is the only painting by which the Austrian artist painted over it midway through working on it.

The $60 million painting by Klimt had disappeared for over two decades. The painting went missing in 1997 during preparations for a show at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Piacenza, Italy. Then in December of 2019, the painting resurfaced when a gardener who was pruning ivy at the gallery discovered it hidden in a trash bag behind a panel in the building the year before.

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.”

NATIONAL MUSEUM THEFT (2000)

In 1993, three men committed Sweden’s biggest art heist at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. They stole paintings by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They were later recovered; three men were charged for the theft.

Seven years later, an even grander heist took place at the National Museum in Stockholm, where thieves armed with a submachine gun relied on a complex array of distractions to break into the museum, steal three works by Rembrandt and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and get away safely.

Police feared that the artworks, valued in 2000 at $30 million, would be swiftly departing Eastern Europe, and a cinematic effort to halt any sale soon kicked off. In 2001, while doing an unrelated drug raid, the police uncovered one of the Renoirs. Then in 2005, while investigating a Bulgarian syndicate, international authorities caught criminals trying to sell the Rembrandt for $42 million. They got the painting back and four of the thieves were arrested while trying to make the purchase go through.

The Nationalmuseum.
Photo : Elmar Hartmann/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

AMSTERDAM VAN GOGH THEFT (2002)

In 2002, just as the Amsterdam Museum devoted to the Post-Impressionist artist was gearing up to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth, thieves stole two early paintings from the Vincent van Gogh Museum.

They had entered the museum by using a 15-foot ladder and breaking through a window. It was unclear what had happened to the works until 2016, when Italian authorities uncovered them in a farmhouse near Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples.

Police linked the thefts to the Camorra Mafia, and authorities arrested several traffickers in connection with the heist. As the works were unveiled once more to the public, Axel Rueger, the Van Gogh Museum’s director, was beaming. “Needless to say, it’s a great day for us today.”

A press conference held for the return of two stolen van Goghs at the Van Gogh Museum in 2003.
Photo : Peter Dejong/AP

THE SCREAM MUNICH MUSEUM THEFT (2004)

If most heists take place in the wee hours of the morning, while institutions are closed, this heist unfolded in a decidedly different manner, in broad view of the public.

Amid tourists ogling at nearby masterpieces in the Munch Museum in Oslo, thieves took The Scream (1910) and Madonna (1894) by the Norwegian Expressionist in 2004. It wasn’t the first time a version of The Scream had been stolen, but it was, in some ways, more daring because of the throngs of people that were around when the thieves held guards at gunpoint and then departed in a black station wagon.

Rumors swirled about what happened afterward. Were the paintings burned? Was the mob involved? In the end, the paintings were recovered in 2006, six arrests were made, and the works went back to the Munch Museum.

The broken frames of two Edvard Munch works stolen in 2004 from the Munch Museum in Oslo.
Photo : Lise Aserud/Scanpix/AP

HENRY MOORE SCULPTURE THEFT (2005)

Henry Moore’s monumental sculptures often involved tons of bronze transformed into amorphous forms that take on human-like qualities. That made one sculpture, titled Reclining Figure, a prime target for thieves looking to make use of a booming market for scrap metal resulting from rising demand in China.

In 2005, thieves made off with the $18 million outdoor sculpture, which weighed a whopping two tons and was on view at the artist’s foundation in Hertfordshire, England. Then, in 2009, British police revealed that they believed the sculptures were cut up, melted down, and sold for £1,500. The people who allegedly destroyed the Moore work were never caught.

A two-ton Henry Moore sculpture was likely melted down after it was stolen.
Photo : Henry Moore Foundation/AP

SPIDER MAN PARIS MUSEUM THEFT (2010)

The art theft from Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville in 2010 was so slick it was compared to Arsene Lupin, fictional theif of French Pulp fame, and of Spider-Man, who inspired the name of the bulgar who stole five major works of modern art from this Paris Museum.

The bulgar, Vjeran Tomic returned repeatedly to the museum, spraying acid on a window that allowed him to enter seamlessly. One night, at 3 a.m., he stole Henri Matisse’s Pastorale (1905). Then, because the alarms didn’t go off, he also took works by Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.

Tomic is believed to have been working on commission for a dealer named Jean-Michel Corvez, who wanted to sell them. Once caught, Tomic was sentenced to eight years in prison by a judge who said that the theft involved taking “cultural goods belonging to humankind’s artistic heritage.”

PARIS MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (2010)

In 2010, five paintings worth an estimated $100 million were stolen from the Paris Museum of Modern Art. The paintings, including works by Picasso and Matisse, were later recovered in a car parked outside the museum.

Image of Paris Museum of Modern Art from Futura Sciences

KUNSTHAL MUSEUM THEFT (2012)

In 2012, seven paintings, including works by Picasso, Monet, and Matisse, were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam. The thieves were eventually caught and sentenced to prison, but the paintings have never been recovered.

GREEN VAULT MUSEUM THEFT (2019)

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 a collected $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. In January of that year, one security firm floated a theory that criminals were trying to sell the jewels on the dark web.