"Art in Demand:
The Greatest Masterpiece Thefts" by Fabio Isman, summary

This book is a documentary chronicling the cultural investigations, published in 2021. The text describes in detail the thefts of these great paintings and the specific work of the Italian police unit tasked with recovering the stolen art.

The Age of Conquest and War Spoils

The seizure of other people’s property has accompanied all military conflicts since the earliest eras. The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal carried off rich spoils from the conquered capital of Elam. The Persian ruler Xerxes I the Great removed a golden statue of Baal from a Babylonian temple in 484 BC. Victors always took cultural treasures as legitimate spoils. The land was given to the state, and generals and soldiers simply appropriated whatever items were available.

Large-scale thefts continued into the relatively recent past. Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler took military looting to a whole new level of organization. Their actions inflicted enormous damage across Europe. Many of the works they looted disappeared forever from European museums.

The high-profile disappearances of great paintings

The theft of famous paintings often boosts their popularity. The disappearance of Leonardo da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" from the Louvre caused a huge stir, although it was safely returned to its rightful place two years later. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s "Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence" had a very different fate. This massive canvas, 2.5 meters high and 2 meters wide, disappeared from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo in the fall of 1969. Rumors circulated that the mafia had hidden it, burying it alongside a shipment of drugs. The great artist’s work remains missing.

Thefts occurred regularly in small Italian towns. In February 1975, three world-famous masterpieces disappeared overnight from the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. The thieves stole Piero della Francesca’s "Flagellation of Christ" and "The Madonna of Senigallia," as well as Raphael Santi’s "The Mute." The thieves calmly walked across the scaffolding installed outside and stole the priceless works of art. The building had no alarm system, and security guards inspected the halls only every two hours with flashlights. The paintings were recovered a year later.

Strange events unfolded around the "Madonna of Mercy" by Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino. The painting was stolen from the Bettona Civic Museum in 1987. The artist painted the work in his old age for a local church, from where it later entered the museum’s collection. The thieves’ actions resembled the plot of a fictional detective story, but all of the thieves were real and meticulously planned the robbery.

Art has attracted criminals far beyond Italy’s borders. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s famous painting "The Scream" has been targeted twice. In 1994, on the opening day of the Winter Olympics, the masterpiece was stolen from the National Museum in Oslo. The thief left a mocking note: "Thank you for such poor security." The thief simply propped a ladder against the wall, broke a window, and carried off the painting under camera fire. This symbolic depiction of suffering was returned three months later thanks to a special operation.

Guardians of cultural heritage

Italy was the first to recognize the urgent need for a systemic fight against such crimes. In May 1969, at the initiative of Arnaldo Ferrara, a special unit of the Carabinieri was established. Its officers focused exclusively on searching for stolen antiquities and paintings. Initially, the unit consisted of only sixteen people, but they laid the foundation for future large-scale investigations.

UNESCO later recommended that all countries establish similar police forces. The Italian Carabinieri faced bureaucratic obstacles, diplomatic barriers, and sophisticated international smugglers. The daily routine of this special unit has recovered tens of thousands of missing objects. During the pandemic, they seized nearly 46,000 artifacts recovered by illegal diggers.

The shadow world of excavations and the mafia

Over time, illegal excavations evolved from a cottage industry into an organized industry. Tomb raiders established a strict hierarchy, with major dealers at the top and ordinary diggers at the bottom. They created supply chains, restored finds, and resold them to major museums. A striking example is the story of the crater with the scene of Sarpedon’s death, painted by Euphronios around 515 BC. In 1972, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired this enormous clay bowl, knowing full well that it was illegally acquired.

The story of a simple firewood supplier, Giuseppe Evangelisti, reveals the human side of this business. On weekends, he would take a long metal pin and set out to search for ancient Etruscan tombs near Lake Bolsena. A man with only an eighth-grade education, he became an active part of a vast smuggling network. He would poke the pin into the ground and, by the sound, detect hidden voids or tombs.

The Sicilian mafia was also actively involved in the theft of ancient artefacts. Cosa Nostra bosses Francesco Messina Denaro and his son Matteo were directly involved in the thefts of rare artifacts. In 1962, a bronze statue of the "Ephebo of Selinunte," approximately one meter tall and previously used as a hat rack, disappeared from the office of the mayor of Castelvetrano. The sculpture remained on the run for six years until it was discovered in Foligno during a fake transaction with an antique dealer. A shootout ensued, after which investigators proved Messina Denaro’s involvement in the theft.

Fugitives with a World-Class Name

Some lost objects are astonishing in their value, despite being absent from the usual lists of world masterpieces. The bronze statue "Athlete of Fano," believed to be by the sculptor Lysippos, was accidentally discovered at sea in 1964. Local fishermen snagged the five-foot-tall figure of a classical youth in their nets. The find was first hidden in a cabbage field in Gubbio, then kept for several months in a local priest’s old bathtub, awaiting a profitable buyer.

Ultimately, the valuable artifact was snapped up by wealthy businessmen. The statue was secretly shipped to Germany. From there, the bronze athlete arrived in California without any permits, where it joined the Getty Museum’s collection. The institution acquired the sculpture in 1977, paying a hefty sum. The Italian government spent decades engaged in complex legal battles to return this ancient monument to its homeland, while American lawyers dragged out the proceedings.