Other brazen art heists like the Louvre jewellery theft
For decades, thieves have been slipping past alarms and guards at museums across the world to steal jewels and paintings meant to outlast us all.
They’ve scaled walls. They’ve dropped through skylights. They’ve disguised themselves as police officers, curators, even janitors to sneak in and out undetected with valuable artwork and artifacts.
Masked men entered the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre after using a van-mounted extendable ladder.Credit: AFP
On Sunday, art thieves entered the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre in Paris and left with eight items of jewellery said to be of “incalculable” worth. Among them: a tiara worn by Empress Eugénie, set with 212 pearls and nearly 3000 diamonds.
The theft joined a long line of breaches at museums large and small, pilfering swords, Renoirs and even the Mona Lisa.
Here are some of the better known thefts:
The Mona Lisa heist, 1911
One summer day, Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker at the Louvre, tucked the Mona Lisa beneath his coat and carried it into the Paris streets. For two years, the painting remained missing, increasing its fame around the world. When the painting reappeared after Peruggia tried to unload it in Italy, Mona Lisa was no longer merely a portrait, but a legend.
Visitors to the Louvre usually view the Mona Lisa “in a matter of seconds from a distance of several metres”.Credit: Alonzo Rovere
Museum of Natural History, New York, 1964
A man known as “Murph the Surf” and an accomplice climbed a fire escape and slipped in through a window of the American Museum of Natural History on a Thursday evening. They cut open three cases in the Hall of Gems and Minerals and walked out with a score of diamonds, emeralds and rubies, including the Star of India — one of the world’s largest sapphires at about a quarter of a pound.
Murph, whose New York Times obituary in 2020 described him as “a tanned, roguish, party-loving beach boy” was helped by lax security: Windows were open, burglar alarms were not functioning, and the security team was understaffed.
New York’s American Museum of Natural History, the scene of Murph the Surf’s 1964 jewel heist.Credit: nna\riwood
Unfortunately for the burglars, they were far from expert at covering their tracks. A suspicious clerk at their hotel called police. Their room had a museum floor plan, brochures on the gems and shoes with glass shards on them. An accomplice promptly confessed.
Murph the Surf had flown to Miami, where the gems were stashed in places like a bus station locker. One gem, the Eagle Diamond, was never found.
Murph the Surf — whose real name was Jack Murphy — served decades in prison both for the theft and an unrelated homicide.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1990
Two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and left with an estimated $US500 million ($767 million) in art treasures. No one has found any of the 13 works lost in the heist – considered the largest art theft in history – including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts.
The frames that housed the paintings remain, their emptiness serving as a reminder of the loss.
National Museum, Oslo, 1994
Like the robbers at the Louvre, two men in Norway climbed a ladder and broke a window to steal the nation’s best-known painting, The Scream by Edvard Munch. It took them less than a minute, and they left behind the ladder, wire cutters and a note: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.”
Scream no more: The Edvard Munch painting spent three months AWOL from Oslo’s National Museum.Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
The painting was recovered three months later, after the government refused to pay a $US1 million ransom demand. Four Norwegian men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation in which undercover agents posed as representatives of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2000
As fireworks lit up the night skies to welcome the new millennium, a thief – or perhaps multiple thieves – dropped through a skylight, filled the gallery with smoke, and left minutes later with Cézanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise. It has not surfaced since.
Missing: Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2003
Robert Mang, an alarm technician, climbed up scaffolding, entered the Vienna museum through a window and stole a gold-plated sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini – the Saliera, or salt cellar, a Renaissance treasure worth $US60 million. He held it for years, sending ransom notes, until police traced a text message from a newly purchased cellphone.
Musee d’Art Moderne Paris, 2010
Vjeran Tomic, a famed thief known as “Spider-Man” for his acrobatic burglaries, slipped through a window without setting off the museum’s alarms. He took five masterpieces: works by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque and Léger.
He said later he had intended to take just the Léger, but took the others because he realised he had more time and he “liked” them. None of the works have ever been found.
Vjeran Tomic aka Spider Man arrives for his trial in Paris in 2017.Credit: AP
Green Vault, Dresden, 2019
Just before two robbers shimmied through their pre-cut hole in a window grate before dawn, they detonated a homemade firebomb in front of a power distribution box. The blast knocked out streetlights around the Green Vault, a set of basement suites that is now part of a museum in Dresden Castle.
Police at the scene of the Green Vault robbery in Dresden, Germany, 2019.Credit: nna\advidler
The thieves made off with jewels worth about $US100 million, lavish pieces from late 18th and early 19th centuries that once belonged to local rulers. They blanketed the room with powder to throw forensic investigators off their scent. Most of the loot has been returned, and five men were convicted in the robbery, but a significant diamond, an elaborate brooch and an epaulet are still missing, while other pieces were damaged or oxidised.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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