Editor’s Note
This article examines the likely fate of the stolen Napoleonic jewels from the Louvre, contrasting the sensational “Arsène Lupin” style of the heist with the grim reality experts predict: the dismantling and dispersal of the treasures for the illicit art market.
While the investigation is in full swing to find the burglars of the Louvre and their enormous loot, the international press has interviewed numerous experts from the art market and its criminals. Most expect the jewels to be dismantled, their settings melted down and sold by weight, and their stones recut and dispersed.
The international press enjoys citing Arsène Lupin to evoke the spectacular theft, in broad daylight and timed at seven minutes, of “priceless” Napoleonic jewels on Sunday at the Louvre Museum. A burglary “of the most audacious,” motivated – who knows? – by a thirst for “international notoriety” and destined for the obligatory “Hollywood treatment,” observes The Guardian.
However, experts observing trends in international art crime see this heist “as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of break-ins focusing more on the material value of the stones or precious metals than on the importance of the objects,” continuing “a trend that has emerged over the past decade in Germany, the UK, and the United States,” writes the newspaper.
confirms Vernon Rapley, former head of London’s police art squad, to the New York Times. It would rather be a very vulgar “theft of goods.”
While in the 20th century “museum security teams were generally faced with the threat of art masterpiece thieves, Sunday’s Louvre heist is the most publicized example to date of the trend of museum burglaries” aimed only at getting their hands on “precious stones or metals,” judges the newspaper.
It is therefore very likely that
remarks Wired.
Some romantic souls want to believe the theft could have been commissioned by some fanatical collector of Napoleonic art, willing to spend millions of euros to wear in front of their mirror Eugénie’s tiara with 2,000 diamonds and Marie-Amélie’s sapphire parure. Or by some kind of
ironizes James Ratcliffe, Director of Recoveries and Legal Counsel at Art Loss Register, a company that catalogs and searches for looted or stolen artworks, in the columns of ARTnews.
he adds. It would just be a trivial case of “risk and reward.” According to him,
Art detective Arthur Brand also calls the hypothesis of a commissioned theft “extremely unlikely.”
he declares to the Guardian.
Everything therefore suggests that the jewels will be dismantled and
notes El País.
The French police
assures Chris Marinello, CEO of Art Recovery International, a company specializing in locating and recovering stolen artworks, to the BBC. Beyond that,
which will have already been “dismantled and smuggled out of the country.”
The thieves will not have an easy task, however, warns Robert Wittman, who runs a security consulting firm and helped create the FBI’s art crime team. And
he says.
he tells ARTnews.
Mr. Wittman adds that
shown by the burglars suggests they are
emphasizing that
