When Leonardo da Vinci ’s " Mona Lisa " disappeared from the Louvre museum in Paris in 1911 , the world was shocked . The larceny start undetected for days . Museum faculty saw the empty sp­ace on the wall and take on the picture had been moved to the Louvre ’s return center for sustenance . But by the second day , the Louvre called the police .

The theft of the " Mona Lisa " by museum worker Vincenzo Perugia was brilliant in its simmpleness . It ’s unclear what character of security system the museum used at the time , but some fact are known for sure . After Perugia ’s shift ended on Sunday , he conceal in a room . When everyone had gone home , he left his concealment place , took the " Mona Lisa " off the wall , remove it from its frame , cling the priceless employment under his shirt and walk out into the night .

­One might cogitate museum surety has vastly improved since 1911 , but most museums do n’t have the money to put in million - dollarsystems , get alone the crisscrossinglaser - beam detectors that protect invaluable objects in the film . compare tobanksand jewelry centers , museum are well-off targets – and it shows . In the last 20 old age alone , thieves have pulled dozens of major paintings off museum walls , including 20 works byVincent Van Goghin a single Amsterdam rip-off in 1991 . Edvard Munch ’s " The Scream " has been steal twice in the last 15 old age .

Due to a variety of circumstances , stealer take paintings from museums on a fairly veritable footing , and with much less planning and discreetness than Thomas Crown . In this clause , we ’ll find out how people walk out of museums with some of the world ’s most priceless works of art , including how a gang attract off one of the biggest artistic creation thefts in European account in February 2008 .

So how do people steal aCézanne , a Van Gogh , aDegasand a Monet in wide daylight in this day in age ? It ’s actually not that hard.­

The Zurich Art Heist

Perugia ’s successful split of the " Mona Lisa " in 1911 was for sure more subtle than recent heist . In 1990 , stealer robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston of about $ 250 million in paintings , let in three Rembrandts , fiveDegassketches and aManet[source : Crime Library ] . They dressed in fake police uniforms and were countenance in by guard after hours .

At the Swedish National museum in 2000 , man flourish a car gun for hire got away with a Renoir and a Rembrandt . Before the robbery , the stealer laid spikes on the roads leading to the museum ; and at the clock time of the looting , accomplice determine off bombs in two other share of the city . The bedlam resulted in a slow police - response time and a successful $ 30 million haul .

Two man slip " The screeching " from the Munch Museum in Oslo , Norway , in 2004 with nothing more than a pistol .

The thieves run away from the museum withPaul Cézanne’s"Boy in the Red Waistcoat , " Claude Monet ’s " Poppy Field at Vétheuil , " Edgar Degas ' " Ludovic Lepic and His girl " andVincent van Gogh’s"Blooming Chestnut Branches , " all still in their protective glassful cases . It may be sheer luck that they catch the Cézanne – the most worthful painting in the museum ’s collection [ source : New York Times].The four house painting together are deserving approximately $ 163 million .

amazingly , two of the paintings , the Van Gogh and the Monet , were detect just 10 day later by a security guard duty in the back seat of a car park in a nearby batch . law opine the four whole kit and caboodle may have just been too heavy to carry around in their protective glass , so the thief desert two . The Cézanne and the Degas , like hundreds of other recognizable painting , including Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn ’s " Storm on the Sea of Galilee , " are still out there . According to theFBI , only about 5 per centum of stolen masterpieces are ever recovered [ author : CNN ] .

One has to wonder , if these works are so recognisable , how can thieves attempt to sell them without getting caught ? How can this type of artistic production stealing be profitable ? It turn out that one of the quickest fashion to get money for the painting is incredibly antagonistic - intuitive .

Why bother stealing art?

Withartprices skyrocketing , museum thefts are on the rise . It might even be more profitable to slip a Picasso – or , in the case of the Zurich heist in February 2008 , aCézanne– than a bag ofdiamonds . Some recent theft have testify how leisurely it can be to take a house painting . But how can thieves sell " son in the Red Waistcoat " if the whole world have it away it was stolen ?

There are really only a couple of ways to do it :

Thieves can deal the house painting to an unscrupulous art trader or collector . While it ’s not the most common way to get rid of a well - known work , there are always people out there who will buy a stolen masterpiece . The stealer have to sleep together exactly whom to necessitate , though . And they ’ll be selling the work for less than 10 pct of market value [ source : CNN ] . That ’s still a fortune , though , with the price of art these days .

If the painting is very recognisable , it ’ll probably never end up on the open market , selling for what it ’s worth . But if the mankind has given up face for a lesser - known work , a sort of artistry - laundering can take blank space . The first dealer might sell it softly for a low price , getting a quick sale to avoid attention . If the painting then modify hands a few times in non - public deals , it can finally end up at public auction with no crimson flags going up , since the owner listing it is , in fact , the legitimate proprietor . If the auction sale house does n’t check up on the picture , it can slip through the cracks .

Director Steven Spielberg discovered he had a stolen Norman Rockwell painting in his collection in 2007 and immediately alert the dominance [ author : MSNBC ] . The piece of work had been steal from a museum in Missouri in 1973 . He ’d paid $ 200,000 for the $ 700,000 work of artistic creation in what he believed was a legitimate sale [ source : CNN ] . TheFBIbelieves the painting had been sold " lawfully " at least twice before Spielberg buy it .

thief can also sell the painting as a fake . The easiest and most mutual way to make money from stolen masterpiece is to trade the real affair as a very high - tone replica . This way , thief can sell the work on the open market . They get far less than what it ’s worth , but when the original is worth 10 or 20 milliondollars , they can still walk away with a dainty profit . The FBI believes that many of the slip chef-d’oeuvre that are still drop are sit in the collections of licit emptor who remember the employment is a fake .

If the thief does n’t desire to take chances a sale , he or she can always hold it for ransom or pass it for the wages money . For a invaluable oeuvre of fine art , museum and their insurance society are willing to pay a lot for retrieval , even if the robbers go free . The Boston museum robbed in a $ 250 million holdup offered $ 5 million for data leading to the painting ' whereabouts , but met with no succeeder . For the 2008 Zurich heist , an unknown entity has proffer a $ 90,000 reward for information on the two missing masterpieces [ source : CNN ] .

There are more than 30,000 work of art listed on the international Art Loss Register , and the FBI guess the market for stolen art to be in the area of $ 6 billion a year .

Lots More Information

Sources

­