Some art thefts are so spectacular that they are remembered forever as art crimes. Many of the art treasures are rediscovered and returned home, others remain lost forever. And sometimes works of art only become really famous when they are stolen. This is what happened with what is probably the most well-known of all pictures in the world today, the Mona Lisa. In 1911, an Italian craftsman working in the Louvre in Paris stole Leonardo da Vinci’s painting. When he tried to sell it two years later, he was caught and arrested.
One of the most daring and $500 million heists in history was the 1990 one from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Disguised as police officers, the robbers overpowered the night watchmen and stole works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet and Degas, among others. Some of the empty frames are still hanging on the walls today and are reminiscent of the art theft – as is the Netflix documentary “This Is a Robbery” from 2021.
The robbery of the two Munch paintings “The Scream” and “Madonna” from the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2004 is also unforgettable. When the paintings reappeared two years later, they were in a terrible state and had to be extensively restored. The perpetrators were convicted, but the masterminds remained undetected.
And then, of course, there is the most recent art robbery thriller, which just ended happily with a return: the Dresden jewel theft of 2019, in which art objects and 21 pieces of jewelery with 4,300 diamonds – insured value at least 113 million euros, immaterial value inestimable – from the Green Vault in Dresden’s Residenzschloss were stolen. Thanks to a deal with the perpetrators, who are currently on trial, most of the valuables were secured and returned to the museum.
The rare sheet was one of the oldest items in the Munich collection
In contrast, the case of the Munich Madonna with child, which also ended happily a few weeks ago, is more of a quiet one. Almost 60 years ago, on August 13, 1965, the drawing by the 17th-century Italian painter Giovanni Battista Salvi, known as Il Sassoferrato, was torn from the cardboard and stolen in the study room of the Graphic Collection. The rare sheet, which was one of the oldest items in the Munich collection, remained missing for decades. Only an inventory entry, an index card and a black and white photo reminded of it.
In 2021, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland/USA took over a private collection. Included, to the great delight of the museum, is one of the rare Sassoferrato drawings. But it was quickly recognized that the new addition bore a damning resemblance to the sheet that had been stolen in Munich and has meanwhile been shown in a catalogue. Only the study of the hand on the right above the Madonna, which was on the Munich sheet, had evidently been attempted to be removed, but it was still vaguely recognizable. Contact was quickly established with the Graphic Collection, which was able to prove its rightful ownership, and so the Madonna drawing returned to Munich from the USA last October.
The drawing is on display in the rotunda of the Pinakothek der Moderne until February 5th. On February 13th, the work will return to the study room of the Graphic Collection, hopefully to permanently delight friends of art on paper.