Stolen masterpieces that are still missing

https://www.thecollector.com/stolen-masterpieces-famous-artworks-missing/

by Tomte • 2 years ago

113 84 2 years ago

brink• 2 years ago

Interestingly, the Mona Lisa wasn't considered to be anything special until after it was stolen. It was the headlines and the frenzy surrounding the news that caused it to be so popular once it was found.

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made...

m3kw9• 2 years ago

Rarity is like an illusion

kibwen2• 2 years ago

Not even rarity, because every painting is basically unique and non-fungible (modulo replicas). Instead, it's memes that make unique things more valuable than other unique things.

bdjsiqoocwk• 2 years ago

Those of us that don't know anything about art still don't consider it anything special. I wouldn't even put it on a wall at home. Looks crusty, for one.

vsnf• 2 years ago

Meanwhile, there are works of immeasurably lesser technical talent hanging on my walls that I spend much time admiring. Good art is good art, and it's best to not let anyone tell you what that means or doesn't mean.

QuesnayJr• 2 years ago

It's not art snobs who made it famous, either. It's just famous for being famous, at that poin. In the same room at the Louvre there's Veronese's "The Wedding at Cana" and several Titians that art snobs would also linger over, but the room is 90% tourists who want to see the Mona Lisa.

nitwit005• 2 years ago

There is a restored copy, possibly made by a student of Leonadro, that you may find less crusty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado)

keiferski• 2 years ago

It was still a painting by one of the most renowned artists and individuals of all time. Maybe it wasn’t the mega-hit that it is today, but “not anything special” isn’t accurate either.

e4325f• 2 years ago

Yes it was. It's a masterpiece by one of the greatest artists of all time. There's a Great Art Explained episode [1] on it that's worth a watch.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElWG0_kjy_Y

satvikpendem• 2 years ago

There are other works by Da Vinci in other museums too but again the Mona Lisa had become uniquely and superlatively special over his other works, and indeed, all other works of art.

jmyeet• 2 years ago

Stealing renowned art like this is an interesting phenomenon as it becomes largely impossible to ever display it or claim it let alone sell it. There are some cases whre the motive doesn't seem to be theft for the black market (eg the ransom case mentioned).

So the psychology is that someone with a lot of money wants to pay to take an artwork and put it in a vault, never displaying it. So the reward is to know something other people don't (ie the art's location) and to exert power over people by denying them the ability to see that art. That paints what seems to be a fairly accurate psychological profile of the ultra-wealthy as a whole.

The other side of art theft is looting, usually in war and particularly by the Nazis in WW2. The interesting part of this one is how the art and auction world enabled and profited off this trade where they willingly participated in the resale of stolen artwork even though there's clear provenance back to the original owners that no one involved in auctions seemed inclined to ever research and find out. Never ask a question you don't want the answer to. Greed is such a powerful motivator.

riffraff2• 2 years ago

Basically all museums beyond galleries are filled with stolen stuff (Elgin marbles anyone?).

I don't think _anyone_ other than the owners who suffered the theft cared about "legit origins" until very recent times.

toyg2• 2 years ago

That's not really true. You know about the Elgin marbles precisely because they're vigorously contested - unlike 90% of artefacts that left Greece, Egypt, Italy, etc in perfectly legal circumstances.

It's true that colonial powers (chiefly Britain and France) have a particularly bad record, but not "all museums" contain looted stuff.

archagon• 2 years ago

I imagine a number of stolen works are hanging in powerful people's penthouse suites. None of their confidants are going to rat them out.

poisonborz• 2 years ago

A number? Likely all of them. These paintings in the end are only important enough for those who can buy it, or who can steal them for themselves (museum employees).

fcknzs• 2 years ago

It is crazy how the German Nazis looted German paintings.

self_awareness9• 2 years ago

It's more crazy that "German Nazis" are sometimes described as an alien, non-german race, that came from the moon.

Nazis were German.

jpalomaki• 2 years ago

I remember an article/documentary about a criminal, who explained he wanted to have a piece of art as his personal insurance.

A highly valued piece of art is irreplaceable. No matter how much money you spend, you won't get that specific piece back. Logic of this person was, that governments could go to extremes in order to get such work back to the museum so this could act as his "get out of jail" -card.

Quite likely it was this documentary, but it is hard to find the details. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09pqx4r

wolverine8762• 2 years ago

So the psychology is that someone with a lot of money wants to pay to take an artwork and put it in a vault, never displaying it.

From what I've read, much contemporary art is purchased with that in mind. Some collectors have warehouses filled with artwork that nobody sees. It's like collecting baseball cards.

Edit: See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40000250

jwstarr• 2 years ago

Inspired by similar tales, my friends and I made a game about it (https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/474859/artful-an...) with the twist that the art is stealing itself.

Ross Anderson's _Security Engineering_ has a chapter on physical security. Given the poor quality of security at most art galleries, one might expect more art to be stolen. However, it seems that it is often too difficult to sell.

bruce5112• 2 years ago

Not to state the obvious, but -all- art, old and new, cheap and expensive are difficult to sell.

Stolen, famous works come with addition costs and restrictions, not to mention jeopardy.

Art is one of those things with a really long tail. Sure there are the famous artists, who are rightly admired, but I don't want a (legitimate or stolen) Rembrandt on my wall.

I do buy art occasionally. Usually it's cheap. It's always just because it's a piece I like. Honestly, the limiting factor is wall space.

schoen• 2 years ago

You might enjoy Regina Spektor's song "All the Rowboats", which seems to posit (maybe like your game) that art objects don't enjoy being kept in museums, and would like to "escape".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CZ8ossU4pc

doosdoos• 2 years ago

The thief of the Ghent Altarpiece was a big fan of the detective books on Arsene Lupin. In real Lupin style, he sent 14 letters to the paintings' owners containing all kinds cryptic hints about the location of the work, before dying unexpectedly. Right before his dead, the thief confesses to his lawyer he had stolen the work. He still tries to give some more details, but it is too late and he passes away.

elric• 2 years ago

It's crazy how much the theft of The Just Judges is part of the local collective consciousness/imagination. Just about everybody in the wide Ghent area claims to know someone who knows for certain that it's buried beneath so-and-so's basement.

self_awareness9• 2 years ago

The most funny thing is that sometimes the museum workers know where the stolen paintings are, but they don't want to be in any trouble by saying who has them. Maybe it's not true for the AAA-tier paintings, but those smaller ones, less popular but still valuable and with historical heritage, could be tracked, in theory.

There was this one case near the place where I live, where a retired oldtimer who was very politicaly influential in his prime time had a few paintings, matching the paintings of the museum 100 kilometers away. When the museum worker was confronted about the missing paintings, the worker did not want to continue the conversation and quickly went away.

The retired oldtimer is not with us anymore, so I imagine the paintings were moved to another members of the family. But tracking them would be rather easy. OTOH, retreiving them wouldn't be easy at all.

withinboredom• 2 years ago

I could imagine a number of them even ending up in the trash. My wife's family threw away most of their mother's odd collections because (a) they didn't have the space for it and (2) nobody knew how to take care of them because she wouldn't let anyone touch them.

toyg2• 2 years ago

In UK, quite a bit of art donated to smaller museums in the XIX century is now missing. Chances of curators and local workers helping themselves to these collections through the decades, are very high. Same for modern art in Italian public buildings, some even from big names like Guttuso.

javajosh• 2 years ago

As an aside, funny that "broad daylight" is seemingly only mentioned when someone gets away with doing something nefarious.

rob74• 2 years ago

It's worth mentioning that there are three versions of The Poor Poet -besides the one stolen from Berlin, one is on display in Munich, and one is privately owned and used to be on display in Nuremberg (but not anymore).

lqet• 2 years ago

Spitzweg’s piece is often seen as comedic because of the old umbrella that’s shown as magically floating in the air.

Isn't it completely obvious that the umbrella is attached to the ceiling by strings, and that it hangs there because the roof leaks?

freilanzer• 2 years ago

Yes, from looking at it for a couple of seconds.

codeflo• 2 years ago

Yes. Nobody thinks that it’s magically floating. Was this written by AI? This reads like ChatGPT nonsense to me: “Many art historians think that Spitzweg wanted to depict a starving artist.”

rtavares• 2 years ago

Probably. In the FAQ, for example, there is a repetition that is usually generated by LLMs:

What is the current status of the investigation into the missing Ghent Altarpiece panel?
The current investigation status of the missing Ghent Altarpiece panel (...)
Is there any information about the security measures that were in place at the Mohamed Khalil Museum during the thefts of Poppy Flowers?
Regarding the security measures at the Mohamed Khalil Museum during the theft of Poppy Flowers by Vincent van Gogh (...)
What is the value of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee today?
The value of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, if it were to be sold today, is challenging to estimate (...)

cubefox4• 2 years ago

Thank you. I always assumed he hanged it on the ceiling to dry. Which doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it.

interludead3• 2 years ago

For me it was not so obvious

plasticeagle• 2 years ago

One was Radu Dogaru, whose mother claimed that she burnt the paintings in her
stove in order to hide the evidence. The Irish Times reported Forensic
investigators tested the remains of the ashes and made a surprising discovery
They found wood, canvas, staples, and paint fragments that support her
statement. This meant that the forensic investigators would need to test these
remains further.

No, that means the painting was burnt. This is a very peculiarly written article.

pvaldes• 2 years ago

That some painting was burnt.

generic92034• 2 years ago

Some of the masterpieces (not paintings, but still) stolen from the Green Vault [1] have not been returned, yet, even though the criminals were caught.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Vault#21st_century

danielam• 2 years ago

War time is an especially bad time for art, libraries and archives, either because of the ensuing chaos, destruction and opportunism, or the systematic plundering and destruction of the invaded territory. As an example, take the truly staggering amount of art and cultural artifacts looted or destroyed, often systematically, during WWII by the Nazis and the Soviets. The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, for example, has a division[0] that specializes in cataloging and attempting to recover such looted art. It is interesting how many suriving works are located in known private or public collections abroad, even periodically showing up at auction. ArtSherlock[1] (in Polish) also has some interesting articles about some of these works. They used to maintain a smartphone app that let you take pictures of artwork to determine whether it is a known missing piece, and then report it, if it is.

[0] http://dzielautracone.gov.pl/

[1] https://artsherlock.pl/

interludead3• 2 years ago

Absolutely, wartime often poses significant threats to cultural heritage... It's such a pity that war still exists

Luc3• 2 years ago

The section about the Ghent Altarpiece is awful and clearly written by someone with no knowledge of the subject. I didn't read further.

ziddoap• 2 years ago

You're implying you have knowledge of the subject, so rather than just a short dismissal, perhaps you could satiate our curiosity with some of your knowledge and/or some links to some non-awful information that you approve of?

Luc3• 2 years ago

Wikipedia. Probably any of the first page results on Google would be better than this.

gield• 2 years ago

Indeed, the last paragraph seems totally made up. The whole panel was stolen, not half of it. And Goedertier never demanded any ransom, the thief did but the article assumes he's definitely the thief. It's still unclear whether he was involved, he was a suspect because during the final minutes of his life, he mumbled some words about being the only person who knows where the stolen panel is.

The paragraph in question, for posterity:

The artwork was stolen yet again in 1934 by stockbroker and businessman Arsène Goedertie. He sent a group of men to the cathedral one evening to steal the bottom left panel known as The Just Judges. Goedertie had sliced the panel in half, leaving the other half for the police to find, and demanded a ransom for the panel. The Belgian Minister refused, so the panel is still missing to this day. You can still check out the entire 12-panel Ghent Altarpiece on display, with an impressive replica of the missing panel.

cubefox4• 2 years ago

This list is not as interesting as it could be. All five stolen paintings seem to be preserved as high quality color photos, but there are other artworks that are only preserved as black and white photos, as an imperfect copy made at the time, or even just as sketches made from memory after the fact. For others we only have text descriptions, like some lost artworks of antiquity.

danaris• 2 years ago

While it's true, as the article says, that the frames in the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum are still left hanging empty on the walls, it leaves out that a major reason for that is that they can't be replaced with anything.

When she created the museum, Gardner stipulated that nothing could ever be added to or removed from the collection. Thus, even if they removed the empty frames from the walls, they would just be left with empty spots instead.

In order to somewhat get around this, the modern museum has built an entire annex (outside the original museum) where they can have more of a flexible collection.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 2 years ago

The center panel, also the largest one, shows people paying homage to their god.

This seems like it was written by AI. The description of the panel sounds like something that would be an AI image caption.

lewismenelaws• 2 years ago

The whole concept of art gaining perceived value after it's stolen is interesting to me.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend "Exit Through the Gift Shop" by Banksy that explores this concept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVXThss1z4

I wouldn't be surprised if most of these robberies are staged in an attempt to raise prices/launder money.

u32480932048• 2 years ago

The Art World makes a lot more sense when you look at it through the lens of a giant money laundering operation

pests• 2 years ago

Yep. It's just a token used to move money around.

If I owe you $100 million for some criminal or nefarious reason... Hey, nice painting you got there, it's worth $100 million you say?

Now I have the token and when someone needs to pay me, I can just pass it along. The token isn't worth anything.

jcalx• 2 years ago

Also see Bloomberg Businessweek's excellent "You Could Fill a Museum" graphic — every item with dimensions listed in the FBI's stolen art database illustrated, to scale. You could fill a museum indeed!

https://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase/3266-y...

Stolen masterpieces that are still missing

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