Art & Crime

The essay traces the history of the most famous crimes perpetrated in the arts with an engaging journalistic slant.

Counterfeiting, money laundering, tax fraud, looting of ancient historical sites: the list of crimes committed in connection with art is long, plus with the huge increase in prices and globalization of the market, crime has become even more specialized: for example, with artnapping, in which a work of art is taken hostage and returned for ransom. The two authors focus on all those, from petty crooks to master forgers, who want to get rich illegally from art, and who sometimes, when discovered, even manage to set themselves up as ingenious and afascinating tricksters.

It starts with the famous 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre by Italian Vincenzo Peruggia, commissioned by the mysterious Argentine Eduardo de Valfierno, who specialized in selling copies passed off as originals. In 2012 a number of works from the Cordia Collection, including a Matisse, a Lucian Freud, a Monet, a Matisse, a Picasso… The mother of the prime suspect apparently burned them to divert suspicion. No trace to date of the Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas and Manet, worth over $100 million, stolen by a group of fake cops from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990.

In 2018, Maurizio Cattelan’s “Golden Toilet,” displayed at Blenheim Palace and usable by visitors, was stolen in London (and in fact the theft caused flooding…): value, $6 million.

BY
Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm are two German journalists who specialize in the field of investigative reporting related to works of art. They have both conducted several investigations in this field and written essays on the subject.