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Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists Review"The first version of the story you hear is always wrong." Although movies makes stealing art look upper crust, Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg prove time and again that art thievery is generally low class crooks looking to make a buck. They aren't interested in the art, it's just that art museums, unlike a bank, are not secure and therefore make stealing a Rembrandt much easier than stealing a million dollars.
That makes it a double crime because the thieves have so little understanding of the masterpiece they are making off with that they are willing to cut it from its frame, roll it up and stash it under beds and behind sofas. Not a good way to deal with four and five hundred year old masterpieces! And why Rembrandts? Why not Titian or Fra Angelico? It is simply that most people are familiar with the name Rembrandt as a fine artist.
But any semi intelligent person would realize the difficulty of reselling such obvious well known works of art. The pieces are generally recovered very quickly and if not a generation will go by before they are recovered.
I was intrigued to read of the problem with etchings. It has never occurred to me but it makes sense, because an etching can be reprinted over and over again, a new print of a Rembrandt etching can easily be inserted into a collection to replace a stolen one. The difference can sometimes be seen easily but not necessarily. The four hundred year old hand-made paper is usually the give away.
I appreciated these authors' interesting details about the art itself, its history and its importance along with the art crime. I had to google Portrait of a Young Girl Wearing a Gold-Trimmed Cloak. A Boston art dealer, Robert C. Vose, visited a monastery in Hollywood Hills to view and appraise their collection. He found most to be fakes with the exception of Rembrandts' Young Girl Wearing a Gold Trimmed Cloak. He bought it for $100,000 and sold it quickly for $125,000. It was then loaned to the Museum of Fine Arts and was stolen in 1975.
The account that made me groan aloud were the 239 items, works of art by Rembrandt, Watteau, Boucher and Peter Brueghel, Greek pottery, medieval crossbow and a Roman bugle. Stéphane Breitwieser was finally caught in 2001 whereupon his mother began cutting and destroying both art and frame, then put the canvas in the garbage disposal, she threw vases, jewelry, statuettes into a canal. By the time police raided the house there was virtually not one thing left! Nothing! 1.5 billion dollars worth of amazing art and relics was gone forever. Breitwieser spent two years in jail.
And then there is the painting by Rembrandt, Saskia at Her Bath, stolen from a home never to return. It was burned! Argh!!!
I grew up in Massachusetts and was fascinated to read of the Worcester museum theft, thefts from the Museum of Fine Art and of course the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum theft. It is an eerie sight to see the vacant frame still hanging in the museum where The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black used to hang.
Having a compiled list at the back of the book is sobering.
This book was so interesting because of the historical details that accompanied the pieces of art that were stolen.
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