We’re obliged to use terms like “daring”, “daylight robbery” and “stolen to order” around the theft of over £75 million-worth of French royal and imperial jewellery from the Louvre.
That’s because it feels like a story. It feels like fiction.
The setting for a start.
Really, as collectors and lovers of art we must hope that these jewels are found quickly and returned to - safe - public display.
But, it has opened a door in the imagination fed by stories of such robberies past.
Here are five collections and treasures that were lifted.
1 - The Lord Stewartby Collection
Lord Stewartby was a politician, but perhaps more than that he was a collector. And like many, he started in childhood. His book on Scottish coins was published while he was still a schoolboy.
Much of his knowledge was gleaned from an incredibly comprehensive and impressive collection of Scottish coins, almost certainly the best in the world.
The collection of around 1,000 coins was all gone in one night in July 2007.
A David I noble from 1357. Scotland's first gold coin. This one is in a national museum collection, which is the only place with a collection even approaching the size and quality of Lord Stewartby's collection.
They dated back to 1136 and the very first Scottish coins. Many were unique. Irreplaceable. And, sadly, the collection was never fully photographed and catalogued.
The £500,000 valuation is surely low in today’s terms.
A £50,000 reward has been offered but the coins remain missing. Selling them in the UK would be impossible, legitimately, but some pieces could be sold outside the country.
Were they stolen to order?
We may never know, as we have no idea where they are. Scholars must hope they haven't been dumped or melted down.
2 - LA Mayer Institute Watch Collection
The largest art theft in Israeli history was done for… fun.
Naaman Diller seems perhaps to have been a compulsive thief or thrill seeker.
One of his highly technical robberies was interrupted by the outbreak of a war in which he was called to serve. He paused, went off to war, and came back and carried on - getting arrested when he banged an uncrackable safe in frustration.
The Marie Antoinette Watch, probably the most valuable ever made, and taken essentially for a laugh by Naaman Diller. Image Michael.vainshtein at Wikimedia.
He was more successful in April 1983 when he came out of the L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem with one of the world’s best collections of watches in his bags.
Among them were a $30-million valued Breguet watch made for Marie Antoinette. Potentially, the most valuable watch in the world.
And he got away with it.
We know now that it was Diller because in 2006 watches were offered back to the museum by his widow.
It’s believed that Diller took the watches for fun and because he loved time pieces - he kept a load of notes on his haul, and only sold three.
He confessed to his wife when he was diagnosed with cancer and told her where the loot was hidden. It’s now back in place.
3 - the Big Maple Leaf coin
There’s been a trend among mints to make enormous, pure gold coins. Some of them are very beautiful. And, they all have huge intrinsic value.
And that might be the downfall of the Big Maple Leaf, which weighed in at a whopping 221 LBs of gold.
The private collector who owned it loaned it to the Bode Museum in Berlin never got it back.
The Bode Museum, who borrowed a huge coin and lost it.
On March 27, 2017 the coin thieves simply walked out - with the help of a skateboard and a wheelbarrow - with the heavyweight portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.
Two people were sentenced for the robbery. Gold particles gave them away. But the coin… Who knows? It was probably melted down - one of the thieves had been Googling “how to break down gold”.
The thieves have been fined the value of the coin.
And one of them, a member of an organised crime group, called the Remmo Clan is also suspected of involvement in the lifting of the $1-billion haul of the New Green Vault robbery in 2019.
Most of this theft has also been recovered.
4 - “Colonel” Blood and the Crown Jewels
Colonel Thomas Blood (who wasn't really a Colonel) was born in Ireland, but managed to fight on both sides of the English Civil War.
Blood seemed to thrive in chaos.
After the war ended, he tried to lead a Cromwellian rebellion in Ireland. Then, he may have taken part in the Scottish Covenanters rebellion. Finally, he took part in an audacious revenge attempt against the Duke of Ormond (who had put down the Irish rebellion), which involved trying to hang him the aristo at Tyburn.
Colonel Blood up to no good. As usual it would appear.
In 1671 his best-known caper involved dressing as a parson and paying to see the Crown Jewels. He took a female accomplice who feigned sickness and Blood started to worm his way in with the family who guarded the jewels.
Finally, he turned up with a little gang of friends, who assaulted the keepers and nabbed the jewels. Blood used a hammer to flatten the Imperial State Crown of Charles II so it would go under his coat. An orb was stuffed down a pair of breeches.
Blood’s gang was taken fairly quickly and the main man was dragged before the King.
Who pardoned him! To considerable public bemusement.
He was later finally convicted of a fraud and imprisoned.
When he died it’s reported that his body was exhumed to make sure it was him.
5 - The Mona Lisa Theft of 1911
To come back full circle, one of the most famous art robberies of all saw the greatest painting in history go walking from the Louvre under the clothes of Vincenzo Peruggia, a handyman, framer and glazer.
Peruggia worked in the museum and hadn’t wasted his time. He knew where everything was and how to open the secure frames for the paintings - some of which he had himself made. So, he dressed in standard work garb and walked in one morning before the crowds, did some business with a screwdriver and walked out with Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece, an employee opening a door for him.
Very dapper, but hardly a master thief. Vincenzo Peruggia had a remarkably easy job of taking the Mona Lisa and getting it back to Italy.
Easy.
It wasn’t even missed for a day.
Peruggia’s links to the museum did eventually put him in the spotlight, but there wasn’t enough to arrest him, and the police went round his apartment with a toothcomb not fine enough to find the painting tucked under his dining table.
Finally, Peruggia went back to his native Italy with the painting and handed it to a dealer apparently expecting a reward for bringing the work back to the homeland of its creator.
Italian museums did cash in by putting on shows of the picture, but the picture had to go back to Paris. Peruggia may have believed that the picture was Napoleonic loot, like much of the Louvre’s collections, but in reality, Leonardi had taken it to France when King Fracis I offered him a safe haven from the political storms of renaissance Italy.
He served a short prison sentence, defending his claims to have acted patriotically rather than greedily by arguing that he could just as easily have walked out with jewellery.
It's a cliche now to refer to La Giaconda as the "world's greatest painting" and the Peruggia robbery - particularly the fuss the picture caused in Italy - is a big part of why it is thought of in that way. Perhaps that was Vincenzo's great achievement.
As someone now has.
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