ICE recovers 19th century painting stolen from Italian monastery

HSI Dallas was able to locate the painting after receiving a tip from the HSI Attaché Office in Rome.

DALLAS, TX.- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Dallas, Texas, recovered a 19th century painting Wednesday that was stolen from the Abbey of Santa Maria in Sylvis in Sesto al Reghena, Italy, in May 2002. The painting called “the Assumption of the Virgin Mary” was created by Italian artist Giuseppe Pappini in August 1851.

HSI Dallas was able to locate the painting after receiving a tip from the HSI Attaché Office in Rome, Italy, in 2019. Based on that tip, HSI tracked the painting to a private art collector in the Dallas-area who had purchased the painting in 2015 from a dealer who was unaware that it was stolen. After learning of the painting’s origins, the private collector voluntarily agreed to hand it over to HSI so that it could be repatriated to Italy and returned to the monastery.

“Investigating the loss or looting of cultural heritage properties and returning them to their countries of origin is an important part of HSI's diverse mission” said Ryan L. Spradlin, special agent in charge of HSI Dallas. “Our specially trained investigators and attachés in more than 40 countries not only partner with governments, agencies and experts who share our mission to protect these items, but they train the investigators of other nations and agencies on how to find, authenticate and enforce the law to recover these items when they emerge in the marketplace.”

This is an HSI Dallas-led investigation with assistance from the HSI Attaché Office in Rome, Italy, and HSI Headquarters Cultural Property, Arts, and Antiquities (CPAA) Division in Washington, D.C.

https://artdaily.cc/news/128019/ICE-recovers-19th-century-painting-stolen-from-Italian-monastery#.X6lTS2hKjIU

No laughing matter as Dutch masterwork stolen for third time!

This photograph taken on November 3, 2011, shows District Chief of Alblasserwaard, Bart Willemsen showing the recovered painting "Two Laughing Boys" by Frans Hals which was stolen from the Leerdam Museum in May 2011. Thieves have stolen the painting "Two Laughing Boys" by Dutch golden age artist Frans Hals from a museum in the Netherlands, the third time it has been taken, police said on August 27, 2020. Ilvy Njiokiktjien / ANP / AFP.

THE HAGUE (AFP).- Thieves have stolen the painting "Two Laughing Boys" by Dutch golden age artist Frans Hals from a museum in the Netherlands, the third time it has been taken, police said Thursday.

The canvas by the 17th century master was taken during a burglary at the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam in the early hours of Wednesday, they said.

The painting, featuring two laughing boys with a mug of beer, was previously stolen from the same museum in 2011 and 1988, being recovered after six months and three years respectively.

Dutch police said in a statement that officers rushed to the museum in the town 40 miles (60 kilometres) south of Amsterdam after the alarm went off around 3:30 am but they failed to find the suspects. "After the manager of the museum was able to provide access to the building, it turned out that the back door had been forced and one painting had been stolen, 'Two Laughing Boys'," the statement said.

Police said they had started an "extensive investigation" involving forensic investigators and art theft experts. They were checking cameras and talking to witnesses and local residents, they added.

Frans Hals was a contemporary of fellow masters Rembrandt and Vermeer during the Dutch Golden Age, a flowering of trade, colonialism and art in the Netherlands roughly spanning the 17th century. He is best known for works including "The Laughing Cavalier", which hangs in the Wallace Collection in London, and "The Gypsy Girl", now housed in the Louvre in Paris.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand -- dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the art world" after tracking down a series of stolen works -- tweeted that "the hunt is on" for the "very important and precious painting by Frans Hals." Brand said the "Two Laughing Boys", an officially designated piece of Dutch national heritage, had been stolen on the anniversary of Hals' death in 1666.

In March burglars stole the Vincent van Gogh painting "Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" from another Dutch museum that was closed for coronavirus measures, on what would have been the painter's 167th birthday.

Brand said n June that he had received two recent photos of the van Gogh as "proof of life".

© Agence France-Presse

https://artdaily.cc/news/127751/No-laughing-matter-as-Dutch-masterwork-stolen-for-third-time

A refugee from Rwanda, confessed to starting the fire and been charged with arson, official sources say. Stating he was angered because his visa had not been renewed.

A volunteer who cleaned and locked Nantes cathedral on the evening of 17 July has confessed to starting the fire and been charged with arson, official sources say. The man, a refugee from Rwanda, was angered because his visa had not been renewed. Following a series of attacks on cultural and religious sites, the law was changed in 2008 so now those charged with criminal damage to historical buildings in France face a maximum of seven years in prison. 

A blaze broke out inside the gothic cathedral of Nantes on 18 July © Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP via Getty Images 

 Only one year after a devastating fire engulfed Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the fire that broke out in the Gothic St Peter and St Paul Cathedral, in Nantes, western France, on Saturday morning has raised alarm bells about the security of France’s 150 cathedrals and 45,000 churches. France's new prime minister Jean Castex rushed to the scene with the home and religious affairs minister Gérald Darmanin and culture minister Roselyne Bachelot, while images of the church's interior darkened by smoke appeared on television news. 

 It took two hours for a hundred firefighters to contain the fire, which destroyed the baroque 1627 grand organ and a smaller 19th-century choir organ, as well as sculptures and a 19th-painting sent by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin from the French Academy in Rome. An arson investigation was opened after firemen spotted three fire starting points. But today, a source close to the investigation said the fire may have started in an old electrical cabinet beneath the grand organ (a device that is no longer authorised in public places) and may have spread to the other organs via electrical circuits. 

 A Rwandan refugee, a volunteer who cleaned the church before it was locked down for the night, was interviewed but released on Sunday without charge. No trace of a break-in has been found. Critics have underscored the the lack of care and funding from the state as well as the cities in which religious buildings are located. 

Nantes cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1972 and was rebuilt over more than a decade. Another 19th-century church had its roof destroyed in the city in 2015. And, in the capital, Saint Sulpice church, which is the temporary cathedral of Paris now, was also damaged by a fire last year. “There is no country in Europe where fires are so common in churches,“ says the architecture historian Alexandre Gady, who also says that “there is no capital on the continent where churches are so damaged”. 

After Notre Dame’s fire, the catholic church asked for a comprehensive survey of the safety of these historical buildings, Gady says, "Has it been done? And if so, where is it?” 

 https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/nantes-cathedral 

VINCENT NOCE 20th July 2020 12:26 BST 

Images of a stolen Van Gogh give experts hope it can be recovered

In an undated handout image, the stolen work, Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” is shown between a copy of The New York Times, which featured an article on the theft, and a copy of a biography of a man who had previously stolen van Goghs. A private art detective investigating the case said he was sent the images of the work, which was taken from a Dutch museum in March. Handout via The New York Times.

AMSTERDAM (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- The photographs look like the sort of images that kidnappers distribute with a ransom demand to establish that their victim is alive. A newspaper’s front page is included and used as a time stamp to indicate that the images are recent.

In this case, the subject isn’t a kidnapping victim, but rather a Vincent van Gogh painting that was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands in March. Arthur Brand, a private Dutch art crimes detective who is investigating the theft, said only that he received them from a “source in my network,” without further elaboration.

He posted them on his Twitter feed and shared them with a Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf. Brand suspects that the images were circulated in criminal circles in an effort to find a potential buyer.

“They are important because it’s a proof of life,” Brand said. “In many cases like this art theft, you see that criminals get nervous and they feel the police are on their backs and they destroy it. Now we know that it hasn’t been destroyed.”

The police investigating the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brand declined to say whether he had been contacted by the police about the photos.

Ursula Weitzel, a leading art crimes prosecutor in the Netherlands, said she had never seen “proof of life” photographs of art works circulated like this. The painting, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” from 1884, was stolen while part of a temporary exhibition at the Singer Laren, on loan from the Groninger Museum.

Security camera footage of the robbery on March 30 shows a man breaking into the museum using a sledgehammer to smash two glass doors and leaving with the painting under his arm.

Andreas Blühm, director of the Groninger Museum, said the photographs of the painting appear authentic, because one shows the back of the work. “You can only have that if you have the painting,” he said in an interview.

He said that he could not comment on whether the museum had been approached with a ransom demand.

https://artdaily.cc/news/124712/Images-of-a-stolen-Van-Gogh-give-experts-hope-it-can-be-recovered

Missing Banksy artwork found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, Italy

Stolen Banksy work from door of Paris Bataclan found in Italy 

The work was found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, according to l'Aquila prosecutor Michele Renzo, who said further details would be provided on Thursday. by Ella Ide 

ROME (AFP).- Italian police said Wednesday they had retrieved a work by famed street artist Banksy commemorating the victims of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks stolen from the Bataclan concert hall. 

The work was an image of a girl in mourning painted on one of the emergency doors of the Parisian venue, where Islamic State gunmen massacred 90 people. It had been cut out and taken in 2019. 

"We have recovered the door stolen in the Bataclan with a Banksy work portraying a sad young girl," a senior Italian police officer from Teramo, in Italy's central east Abruzzo region, told AFP. 

The raid was conducted with French police, he added. The work was found in an abandoned farmhouse in Abruzzo, according to l'Aquila prosecutor Michele Renzo, who said further details would be provided on Thursday. 

Works by Banksy, known for their distinctive style, irreverent humour and thought-provoking themes, have been found on walls, buildings and bridges from the West Bank to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. At auction, they have sold for more than $1 million. 

Stealing works: The portion of the Bataclan door is not the only Banksy to have been stolen from Paris. In 2018, the artist "blitzed" the French capital with murals during a whirlwind trip, which he said was to mark the 50th anniversary of the Paris student uprising of 1968. After he appeared to authenticate eight of the Paris works on his Instagram account, it did not take long for thieves to strike. 

Works stolen included a mural of a businessman in a suit offering a dog a bone, having just sawed the animal's leg off. Another was an image of a masked rat wielding a box cutter, which disappeared from outside the Pompidou Centre. 

Banksy took on the rat as his avatar, a symbol of the vilified and downtrodden, in homage to Paris street artist Blek le Rat. Blek started out in 1968 when a general strike by students and workers brought France to a halt. 

Some of the stolen works have since been recovered and fans have covered some of his Paris street art with Plexiglass to protect them. But one mural of a migrant girl was defaced with blue spray paint shortly after news of its discovery spread on social media. 

Banksy is believed to have started out as a graffiti artist in London, although he has kept his identity a secret. The most dramatic of his Paris 2018 creations was a pastiche of Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps", with Bonaparte wrapped in a red niqab. It appeared on a wall in an ethnically mixed district of northern Paris. 

 © Agence France-Presse

https://artdaily.cc/news/124438/Stolen-Banksy-work-from-door-of-Paris-Bataclan-found-in-Italy

Saudi Arabia Has Joined a Lawsuit Against Disgraced [and Vanashed] Dealer Inigo Philbrick, Claiming He Sold Them a Kusama Installation He Didn’t Own

Who really owns the multimillion-dollar Yayoi Kusama 'Mirror Room'?

Eileen Kinsella, May 21, 2020

Inigo Philbrick, 

©Patrick McMullan Photo by Clint Spaulding/PMC

An entity known as MVCA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which is connected to the collection of the Royal Commission for Al-Ula and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to Bloomberg, has retained an attorney to represent its interests as a defendant in an existing Miami lawsuit against Philbrick.

MVCA bought a major Yayoi Kusama installation, All The Eternal Love I Have for Pumpkins (2016), in April of 2019 and loaned it to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami later that year, according to an October report in Bloomberg, which cited sources familiar with the purchase.

The problem? The original owners of the Kusama didn’t know that their partner and co-owner, Philbrick, had sold the work to MVCA from under them.

The Kusama installation is now one of nine works named in a bombshell lawsuit filed against Philbrick last fall by the Berlin-based finance company Fine Art Partners, run by principals David Tümpel and Loretta Würtenburger, seeking the return of the works, worth an estimated $14 million. Attorneys for MVCA, the Royal Commission, and Fine Art Partners did not respond to requests for comment.

Yayoi Kusama, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, detail (2016).
Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore and Victoria Miro, London. © Yayoi Kusama.

For years, Philbrick and Fine Art Partners had an art-flipping arrangement where they would buy key works by blue chip artists—including Wade Guyton, Donald Judd, Rudolf Stingel, and Christopher Wool—hold them for several years, and then resell them and split the profits according to prearranged percentages.

According to their complaint, Philbrick bought the Kusama on the group’s behalf in September 2017 for $3.3 million with the understanding that he would resell it for a profit—a target price of $5 million is named on the agreement, with both sides splitting the profit. It is not clear if the Royal Commission ultimately paid that $5 million target price.

The contract was written in accordance with German laws, so it remains to be seen how that will play out in a US court. Even as Tümpel became increasingly frustrated over the course of 2019 over delayed or unremitted funds, Fine Art Partners seemingly had no idea that Philbrick had already sold Kusama’s Pumpkin installation out from under them. Roughly five months after the purported sale to Saudi Arabia, in a September 2019 email responding to concerns, Philbrick told Tümpel the Miami exhibition could help attract a buyer:

“We are preparing the press launch for the Pumpkin Room, which will go into soft view for trustees and other potential funders on the 23rd, in advance of a public launch on October 1st. The presentation is being coordinated with an international PR campaign, which should bring us into contact with a number of potential buyers… To my knowledge this is the first time a mirror room has been presented in a public context that is not either primary market or already in a museum collection.” But soon thereafter, the owners learned that Philbrick had already sold the Kusama, and filed their lawsuit against him.

In late January, as the Kusama show was nearing its end, a Miami-Dade judge issued an injunction stipulating that the artwork must remain in Miami as the case ran its course, according to a report in ARTnews at the time.

After the show’s run, the installation was to be broken down and disassembled. Fine Art Partners had said in a prior filing that it feared MVCA might remove the work from Florida soon after the show ended. Kusama’s infinity room installations are known to be extraordinarily complicated when it comes to installing and deinstalling.

The current whereabouts of the Pumpkin installation are unknown. An art storage company spokesperson in Miami who did not want to be identified, confirmed to Artnet News that the empty crates used to initially ship the work to Florida remain at the warehouse where Philbrick stored them through the run of the Miami show.

Late last month, Artnet News learned that the US Department of Justice is also investigating the dealer, according to four sources who did business with Philbrick or are involved in legal proceedings against him.

At least two companies that provided art support services for Philbrick over the past several years confirmed that they received grand jury subpoenas, indicating a criminal investigation, from the Department of Justice in recent months, asking the companies to supply all records related to business transactions with Philbrick.

Since last fall, Philbrick, who has since vanished, has been targeted by former clients who claim he sold the same works to multiple people and defaulted on loans he secured using art he didn’t own as collateral. Now, disgruntled former business associates are trying to seize his personal assets, which filings suggest could amount to as much as $70 million, as well as $150 million from his business.

The filing that MVCA attached to the Fine Art Partners lawsuit does not mention the specific Kusama artwork nor the nature of its involvement beyond that it is a defendant. But there is little doubt the two entities are battling over ownership rights to the highly-prized, seven-figure Kusama pumpkins.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/saudi-arabia-joining-lawsuit-against-inigo-philbrick-1867710?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=US%20News%20Morning%205%2F22%2F20&utm_term=US%20Daily%20Newsletter%20%5BMORNING%5D

101 arrested and 19,000 stolen artefacts recovered in international crackdown on art trafficking

The Spanish National Police recovered a unique Tumaco gold mask.

More than 19,000 archaeological artefacts and other artworks have been recovered as part of a global operation spanning 103 countries and focusing on the dismantlement of international networks of art and antiquities traffickers.

101 suspects have been arrested, and 300 investigations opened as part of this coordinated crackdown. The criminal networks handled archaeological goods and artwork looted from war-stricken countries, as well as works stolen from museums and archaeological sites.

Seizures include coins from different periods, archaeological objects, ceramics, historical weapons, paintings and fossils. Facilitating objects, such as metal detectors were also seized.

These results were achieved during the global Operation Athena II, led by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and INTERPOL, which was carried out in synchronization with the Europe-focused Operation Pandora IV coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and Europol in the framework of EMPACT. Details of both Operations, which ran in the autumn of 2019, can only be released now due to operational reasons.

Online illicit markets

Law enforcement officers paid particular attention to the monitoring of online market places and sales sites, as the Internet is an important part of the illicit trade of cultural goods.

During what was called a ‘cyber patrol week’ and under the leadership of the Italian Carabinieri (Arma dei Carabinieri), police and customs experts along with Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO mapped active targets and developed intelligence packages. As a result, 8,670 cultural objects for online sale were seized. This represents 28% of the total number of artefacts recovered during this international crackdown.

Operational highlights

• Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport just as the objects were about to depart for Istanbul, Turkey.
• The Spanish National Police (Policia Nacional), working together with the Colombian Police (Policia Nacional de Colombia), recovered at Barajas airport in Madrid some very rare pre-Columbian objects illegally acquired through looting in Colombia, including a unique Tumaco gold mask and several gold figurines and items of ancient jewellery. Three traffickers were arrested in Spain, and the Colombian authorities carried out house searches in Bogota, resulting in the seizure of a further 242 pre-Columbian objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.
• The investigation of a single case of online sale led to the seizure of 2,500 ancient coins by the Argentinian Federal Police Force (Policia Federal Argentina), the largest seizure for this category of items, while the second largest seizure was made by Latvian State Police (Latvijas Valsts Policija) for a total of 1,375 coins.
• Six European Police forces reported the seizure of a hundred and eight metal detectors, demonstrating that looting in Europe is still an ongoing business.

Colombian authorities seized 242 objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.

A Menaion from 1760 was intercepted in Romania, as well as coins.

Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport.

Objects seized by Spain’s Guardia Civil.

Objects seized in the Czech Republic.

Seizure by Chilean customs.

Cultural objects seized in Italy.

Protecting our cultural heritage

This is the second time that Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO have joined forces to tackle the illicit trade in cultural heritage. Given the global nature of this crackdown, a 24-hour Operational Coordination Unit (OCU) was run jointly by the WCO, INTERPOL and Europol. In addition to assisting with information exchanges and issuing alerts, the OCU also carried out checks against various international and national databases, such as INTERPOL’s database on Stolen Works of Art and Europol’s European Information System.

“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target.” Jürgen Stock, INTERPOL Secretary General

“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock. “If you then take the significant amounts of money involved and the secrecy of the transactions, this also presents opportunities for money laundering and fraud as well as financing organized crime networks,” added the INTERPOL Chief.

“Organized crime has many faces. The trafficking of cultural goods is one of them: it is not a glamorous business run by flamboyant gentlemen forgers, but by international criminal networks. You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons: we know that the same groups are engaged, because it generate big money. Given that this is a global phenomenon affecting every country on the planet – either as a source, transit or destination, it is crucial that Law Enforcement all work together to combat it. Europol, in its role as the European Law Enforcement Agency, supported the EU countries involved in this global crackdown by using its intelligence capabilities to identify the pan-European networks behind these thefts,” said Catherine de Bolle, Europol’s Executive Director.

 “The operational success of Customs and its law enforcement partners offers tangible proof that international trafficking of cultural objects is thriving and touches upon all continents. In particular, we keep receiving evidence that online illicit markets are one of the major vehicles for this crime. However, online transactions always leave a trace and Customs, Police and other partners have established effective mechanisms to work together to prevent cross border illicit trade”, said Dr Kunio Mikuriya, WCO Secretary General.

Background

Many activities carried out during the Operation were decided on and conducted jointly between customs and police at national level, with the support and participation of experts from the Ministries of Culture as well as from other relevant institutions and law enforcement agencies.

Article link - INTERPOL, Europol and World Customs Organization join forces during Operations Athena II and Pandora IV: https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2020/101-arrested-and-19-000-stolen-artefacts-recovered-in-international-crackdown-on-art-trafficking

Early Van Gogh painting stolen from Dutch museum

Vincent van Gogh’s "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" (1884). The painting was stolen overnight on Monday, March 30, 2020, from a small museum in Laren in the Netherlands, just 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam, on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday. Groninger Museum via The New York Times.

BERLIN (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- A Vincent van Gogh painting was stolen early Monday from a small museum in Laren in the Netherlands, just 20 miles southeast of Amsterdam, on what would have been the artist’s 167th birthday.

“I feel enormous anger and sadness,” Jan Rudolph de Lorm, the museum’s director, said. “Because especially in these dark days that we are in, I feel so strongly that art is here to comfort us, to inspire us and to heal us.”

Police were called to the Singer Laren museum at 3:15 a.m. Monday, when an alarm went off. By the time they got there, the thief or thieves were already gone, said a spokeswoman for the Dutch police.

All police found was a shattered glass door and a bare spot on the wall where the painting was displayed. Hours later, authorities announced that the work, “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” was taken.

The heist comes as museums in much of Europe and the United States are closed in attempts to stem the spread of the coronavirus. It also comes eight years after a spectacular breach at a museum in Rotterdam, where thieves made off with seven paintings valued at more than 100 million euros (about $110 million) by forcing an emergency exit, exposing the relatively weak security systems at some art museums.

Coronavirus or not, guards are not usually posted at the museum overnight. The alarm system is linked straight to the local police.

“They knew what they were doing, going straight for the famous master,” de Lorm said. Police agreed that it would have taken minutes from the time of forced entry to leaving the premises.

The painting was on loan from the Gröninger Museum for a special exhibition, “Mirror of the Soul,” which was to run from January to May. “It’s an early picture, before Arles and before Paris, so it is darker and less recognizable as a van Gogh,” said Andreas Blühm, director of the Gröninger.

Because of the coronavirus outbreak, museums in the Netherlands closed March 13, and the Singer Laren had announced it would be closed until at least June 1.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

https://artdaily.cc/news/122208/Early-Van-Gogh-painting-stolen-from-Dutch-museum

Thieves Were Caught Attempting to Steal Medieval Stones From Notre-Dame Cathedral During Paris’s Citywide Lockdown

Two men were taken into custody after attempting to heist stones to sell the black market, according to a spokesperson for the cathedral.

A photograph taken on December 26, 2019, shows a giant crane outside the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was partially destroyed when fire broke out beneath the roof on April 15, 2019. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP) (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images)

Since the devastating fire that nearly leveled Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral last April, the iconic French landmark has been undergoing an unprecedented restoration. But intensifying quarantine measures in France have halted those recovery efforts indefinitely last week—and two would-be thieves attempted to take advantage of the situation.

The thieves allegedly broke into the construction site and attempted to sack several fallen stones from inside the cathedral. According to Le Parisien, which first reported the news, the two men were apprehended by guards who spotted them in the early evening on March 17. A spokesperson for Notre Dame says it is believed that the men intended to sell the stones illicitly on the black market and that they had likely broken in through a fault in the construction site.

The construction site remains guarded 24 hours a day despite the construction pause.

Notre Dame is devoid of tourists, two women stand outside the emblematic monument on March 9, 2020 in Paris. Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images.

The recent halt in construction will likely put a dent in the five-year timeline for restoration established by French Prime minister Emmanuel Macron—a timeline many experts already found hasty. Meanwhile, the delicate process of removing melted scaffolding, which has threatened the stability of the building since the blaze, was scheduled to begin on March 23, adding further concerns to the future of the continuously imperiled edifice. Reconstruction efforts were previously stalled when the cathedral’s debris was found to be giving off dangerous levels of toxic lead pollution.

Nevertheless, the eight months of restoration thus far have been eye-opening both to scientists and historians with new insights about the process of the cathedral’s construction from the 12th to 14th century, and the discovery of remnants of earlier church structure incorporated into the overarching plan, according to a recent article by Science magazine.

The hiatus at Notre Dame is just one of the many measures taken to protect public health in France, including the closure of all museums and limiting gatherings to 100 people.

Katie White, March 23, 2020

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/thieves-plunder-notre-dame-stones-renovation-pause-1812831

Three Paintings, Including a Major Van Dyck, Stolen from Oxford University Gallery

Antony Van Dyck, 'A Soldier on Horseback', ca. 1616. COURTESY CHRIST CHURCH PICTURE GALLERY

Over the weekend, three paintings, including a significant work by the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck, were stolen from a gallery at Oxford University’s Christ Church college, in what local police are calling a “high-value burglary.”

Van Dyck’s A Soldier on Horseback (1616), Salvator Rosa’s A Rocky Coast, with Soldiers Studying a Plan (1640s), and Annibale Carracci’s A Boy Drinking (1580) were taken from the Christ Church Picture Gallery late Saturday night. A report by the Times estimated that the works pilfered from the British museum could be worth an estimated £10 million (or about $12.2 million).

Inspector Jon Capps, of the Thames Valley Police, said in a statement, “The artwork has not yet been recovered but a thorough investigation is under way to find it and bring those responsible to justice. There will be an increased police presence in the area while officers and staff carry out enquiries.” Police are currently appealing for any information from the public on the break-in, and officials have not yet provided an explanation for how the thieves entered the museum and how the works were taken.

A Christ Church college spokesperson told the Guardian that the gallery will be closed until further notice.

The paintings by Carracci and Van Dyck were among a bequest of General John Guise in 1765 of more than 200 paintings and nearly 2,000 drawings to Oxford University. Rosa’s A Rocky Coast was bequeathed by Sir Richard Nosworthy in 1966. Van Dyck’s current auction record stands at $13.5 million, for a self-portrait sold at Sotheby’s London auction house in 2009.

BY TESSA SOLOMON, March 16, 2020 2:47pm
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/van-dyck-stolen-christ-church-oxford-1202681215/

Gardner Museum launches audio walk detailing infamous Museum theft and thirteen stolen artworks

In this Thursday, March 11, 2010 file photo, empty frames from which thieves took "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," left background, by Rembrandt and "The Concert," right foreground, by Vermeer, remain on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

BOSTON, MASS.- Marking the 30th anniversary of the infamous Gardner Museum theft, the Gardner Museum announced a new audio walk detailing the theft and honoring the thirteen stolen artworks, available to visitors onsite and via the Museum’s mobile-friendly website beginning March 4, 2020.

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the Museum and left with thirteen works of art including Vermeer’s The Concert, Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Manet’s Chez Tortoni, and Edgar Degas’ Leaving the Paddock. The theft of more than $500 million worth of artwork remains the largest unsolved art heist in history. Today, the stolen artworks are remembered in the Museum’s galleries by their empty frames, which hang in their original locations on the gallery walls.

Now, visitors to the Gardner Museum will be able to recount the theft in a newly released audio walk narrated by Anthony Amore, the Museum’s Director of Security, and Nathaniel Silver, William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection. The new audio walk is the most comprehensive and official account of the theft provided by the Museum, including an immersive retracing of the thieves' path throughout the Museum’s galleries that night, and detailing the thirteen missing works of art and their importance—considered amongst the most valuable stolen objects in the world.

“This was a horrific robbery. A robbery that deprived not just the Gardner Museum—but more importantly the public—of some of the greatest masterpieces in the world,” said Amore. “Our hope is that the audio walk will not only help visitors learn more about the Gardner Museum theft, but also appreciate and come to know more about these incredible missing works of art that we're still working to recover.”

Among the works taken that night included Rembrandt’s only seascape; and one of only 36 known paintings made by Vermeer.

The Dutch Room. Image by Sean Dungan.

Dutch Room PDF Full Artwork Listing: https://www.gardnermuseum.org/sites/default/files/uploads/files/Dutch%20Room%20Guide.pdf

Throughout the audio walk, Amore shares insights into the thieves’ thinking and decisions made as they moved through the Museum during the theft’s 81 minutes. Curator Nathaniel Silver details not only the beauty and importance of the missing artworks, but also a look into Isabella Stewart Gardner’s deliberate choices of installation in the gallery spaces, and the “visual conversations” she created between works of art throughout the Museum.

“Our intention is always to keep present the memory and images of these masterworks until we can celebrate their return. This audio walk helps visitors to imagine what’s no longer there, and in doing so evokes Isabella’s original intention for these galleries,” said Silver. “We mourn the losses from the theft with the empty places left on the wall—but Isabella’s vision persists, in the more than sixteen thousand objects still in the collection, the galleries she installed them in, and the museum she created to house them.”

The audio walk will be available to stream for free via mobile phones, and handheld audio walk devices are available for rental at the Museum for $5.

The search for the missing works remains part of an active and ongoing investigation, and the Gardner Museum is offering at $10 million reward for information that leads directly to the recovery of all the stolen works in good condition. Find more information about the reward, the audio walk, and other resources about the theft, at: https://www.gardnermuseum.org/about/theft.

“We want everyone to know what these works look like because although they are gone—for now—they are not forgotten,” said Amore. “We look forward to the day when they can take their rightful place again so that our visitors can enjoy them in person.

https://artdaily.cc/news/121453/Gardner-Museum-launches-audio-walk-detailing-infamous-Museum-theft-and-thirteen-stolen-artworks#.XmJtv6hKiUk

Norway authorises demolition of building with Picasso murals

People pass Picasso's mural art work "The Fisherman" on the government quarter's 'Y building' in Oslo, Norway on August 6, 2013. AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSEN.

OSLO (AFP).- Norway gave the go-ahead on Wednesday for the demolition of a bomb-damaged building adorned with drawings by Spanish master painter Pablo Picasso. The government, which ruled out a further postponement to the 2014 decision to demolish the building, has said it would relocate the two Picasso murals.

Completed in 1969 in the centre of Oslo, the "Y block", named for its shape, bears drawings by Picasso sandblasted on its walls - the work of Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar, who collaborated with the Spanish master painter.

Previously the home of a government ministry, the building was damaged in the deadly bomb attack carried out by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik on 22 July 2011, before he went on to carry out a mass shooting on the island of Utoya, killing a combined 77 people.

In 2014, Norway decided to demolish the building for security reasons as part of a major reconstruction project, and decided to relocate the murals "The Fishermen" and "The Seagull." Anther building, "H block", which was also damaged in the blast and has three other Picasso murals, will not be destroyed.

The 2014 decision to knock down "Y block" provoked a backlash among champions of architectural heritage and the ensuing public outcry saw a delay to the demolition. Three organisations and associations announced on February 13 their intention to take the state to court and asked the government to postpone the demolition until the court had ruled on the matter.

On Wednesday, the government rejected this request, arguing that further delays would lead to financial cost as well as the postponement of the reconstruction project which has already been decided. The ministry of local government and modernisation said in a statement that the agency in charge of managing the state's real estate assets, Statsbygg, had been given the "assignment to start preparation work for the demolition of the Y block."

No starting date has been set, but postponing the implementation of the measure beyond April 1 would cost between 30 and 50 million Norwegian kroner ($3.2 million to 5.3 million or 2.9 million to 4.9 million euros) per month, according to Statsbygg. A petition launched a year ago to stop the demolition of "Y block" had gathered nearly 28,000 signatures by midday on Wednesday.

© Agence France-Presse
https://artdaily.cc/news/121292/Norway-authorises-demolition-of-building-with-Picasso-murals#.Xlk0cahKiUk

Berlin court jails three over 100-kg gold coin heist

One of the defendants, Wissam R., hides his face behind a folder as he arrives for the opening of the trial over the theft of the so-called "Big Maple Leaf" golden coin from the Bode-Museum last year on January 10, 2019 at a court in Berlin. Three men linked to a notorious Berlin crime family face court from January 10, 2019, over the spectacular theft of the giant 100-kilogramme (220-pound) commemorative gold coin worth 3.75 million euros ($4.3 million). Odd ANDERSEN / AFP.

BERLIN (AFP).- A Berlin court sentenced three men to multi-year jail sentences on Thursday for the spectacular theft of a 100-kilogram (220-lb) gold coin from one of the German capital's museums.

State court judges jailed two men aged 23 and 21, who belong to a family of Arab origin notorious for ties to organised crime, for four years and six months each. A 21-year-old security guard at the museum received a sentence of three years and four months, while a fourth defendant was cleared of all charges.

Police have found no trace of the 100-kilogram (220-pound) Canadian coin since the late-night heist in March 2017 from the Bode Museum, located close to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Berlin apartment.

The "Big Maple Leaf", one of five minted in 2007, is considered the world's second-largest gold coin after the one-tonne Australian Kangaroo issued in 2012.

Prosecutors assume the nearly pure-gold treasure, which bears a profile image of Queen Elizabeth II, was either cut up, melted down or taken abroad.

The coin has a notional value of one million Canadian dollars ($750,000), but the gold itself is worth considerably more.

Police raids in July 2017 on premises in and around Berlin linked to the perpetrators' Remmo "clan" saw guns, luxury cars and more than 100,000 euros in cash confiscated. Investigators also used phone taps and GPS devices to track cars and searched more than 50 properties, the defence said at the trial.

Security camera footage of the heist shows three men wearing dark hoodies, scarves and baseball caps making their way to the museum. They broke in through a window, smashed a glass case with an axe and used a rope, wooden beam and a wheelbarrow to lift the coin onto adjacent elevated urban railway tracks before transferring to a car, said prosecutor Martina Lamb.

The Remmo family, whose patriarchs fled war-torn Lebanon in the 1980s, are considered to be one of Berlin's most notorious organised crime clans. Police last year targeted the Remmos with the seizure of 77 properties worth a total of 9.3 million euros, charging that they were purchased with the proceeds of various crimes, including a 2014 bank robbery.

In recent years, so-called "clans" of primarily Middle Eastern origin have become a particular focus for police, politics and media in Berlin. A popular fictional TV series, "4 Blocks", has even focused on a crime family in the capital's Neukoelln district.

© Agence France-Presse
https://artdaily.cc/news/121129/Berlin-court-jails-three-over-100-kg-gold-coin-heist#.Xk_2wShKiUk

Egypt court jails ex- Italian diplomat for smuggling artefacts

Gilded Coffin Lid for the Priest Nedjemankh (detail) Late Ptolemaic Period (150–50 B.C.) Cartonnage, gold, silver, resin, glass, wood The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, 2017 Benefit Fund; Lila Acheson Wallace Gift; Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest; Leona Sobel Education and The Camille M. Lownds Funds; and 2016 Benefit Fund, 2017 (2017.255b) Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

CAIRO (AFP).- A Cairo criminal court sentenced a former honorary Italian consul to 15 years in jail in absentia on Tuesday for smuggling antiquities out of the country, a judicial source said.

Ladislav Otakar Skakal, Italy's former honorary consul in Luxor, attempted to smuggle 21,855 artefacts from various historical eras in 2017, according to the prosecutor general. These included over 21,000 golden coins, 151 miniature figurines, five mummy masks, 11 pottery vessels, three ceramic tiles dating to the Islamic period and a wooden sarcophagus.

Italian police found the sizeable loot in a diplomatic shipping container heading from the port city of Alexandria to Salerno in Italy in 2017.

Skakal's trial, along with other accomplices, began in September last year. Prosecutors found that the antiquities were smuggled with the aid of Raouf Ghali, the brother of former Hosni Mubarak-era finance minister Youssef Ghali. A verdict is expected next month for Skakal's alleged Egyptian accomplices.

Egypt managed to retrieve the stolen antiquities in cooperation with Italian authorities in 2018. It also requested that Interpol issue a red notice against the disgraced diplomat.

Last year, a stolen golden coffin of a Pharaonic priest was unveiled in Cairo after authorities managed to retrieve it from New York.

Antiquities smuggling had thrived in the tumult that followed the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak.

In recent years, Egypt has sought to promote its archaeological heritage in a bid to revive its vital tourism sector, which has taken a battering from political turmoil after the revolution.

© Agence France-Presse
https://artdaily.cc/news/120309/Egypt-court-jails-ex--Italian-diplomat-for-smuggling-artefacts#.Xjwr5WhKiUk

Ten sculptures by Dali nabbed in Stockholm break in

Owner of the Couleur art gallery Peder Enstrom stands behind a police tape as an officer walks towards the gallery where exhibited Salvador Dali sculptures have been stolen by, according to the Police, “at least two thieves” who smashed the entrance window setting the alarm off at 4 a.m. on January 30, 2020, in Stockholm, Sweden. ALI LORESTANI / TT News Agency / AFP.

STOCKHOLM (AFP).- Ten sculptures by surrealist artist Salvador Dali were stolen from a Stockholm gallery in a dawn break in on Thursday, the gallery's owner told AFP.

The thieves smashed the glass door of the Couleur gallery in the upscale neighbourhood of Ostermalm in Stockholm and nabbed the sculptures, valued at between 20,000 and 50,000 euros ($22,000 to $55,000) each, before fleeing the scene in a car according to witnesses.

The stolen sculptures include bronze models of the artist's recognisable molten clocks, of which there are about 350 around the world.

They were on loan and came from a Swiss collection.

Peder Enstrom, the owner of the gallery thought there must have been several thieves because of the mess they left behind, adding that "they were probably working together".

Despite the value of the works, Enstrom said the thieves would likely struggle to cash in on their score.

"They didn't get the certificates, which is very good because that will give them some big problems trying to sell the sculptures," he said.

© Agence France-Presse
https://artdaily.cc/news/120526/Ten-sculptures-by-Dali-nabbed-in-Stockholm-break-in#.Xjwq1mhKiUk

A Hacker Posing as a Venerable British Art Dealer Swindled a Dutch Museum Out of $3.1 Million

The museum sued the dealer in a London court. Artnet News, January 30, 2020

Dickinson's lawyer, Bobby Friedman, says the Rijksmuseum should have independently confirmed the legitimacy of the account before wiring the money, adding that his client, a specialist in Old Master paintings, was never aware any fraud was taking place. Each side is accusing the other of being of having been hacked.

John Constable, A View of Hampstead Heath: Child’s Hill, Harrow in the Distance (1824).

The Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, the Netherlands, was in the midst of a months-long email negotiation with dealer Simon C. Dickinson to purchase a prized John Constable painting when hackers hijacked the exchange, posing as Dickinson and convincing the museum to funnel the money into a Hong Kong bank account.

Now the museum is attempting to sue Dickinson, claiming the dealer should have known about the fraud, according to Bloomberg.

In a London commercial court this morning, Gideon Shirazi, a lawyer representing the museum, argued that negligence on the part of the dealer’s team allowed the thieves to steal the museum’s money. Shirazi claimed that Dickinson’s negotiators were aware of emails between the museum and the hackers, but did nothing to stop the transaction.

“By saying nothing, they said everything,” he said.

Dickinson’s lawyer, Bobby Friedman, said the museum should have independently confirmed the legitimacy of the bank account before wiring the money, adding that his client, a specialist in Old Master paintings, was never aware any fraud was taking place. Each side is accusing the other of having been hacked.

“Instead of accepting the reality of the situation, the museum has reacted by pursuing a series of hopeless claims against [Dickinson], in the hope of pinning the blame for the museum’s mistake on [the dealer],” Friedman wrote in a submission to the court.

Meanwhile, the museum is holding onto the painting and preventing Dickinson, who is still unpaid, from selling the work to another buyer. A London judge has thrown out the museum’s attempts to sue for negligence, but left open the possibility that the museum could pursue amended claims. The judge is now weighing who will have ownership of the painting.

“This unfortunate event highlights the dangers of cybercrime in the art world, which is regrettable for both the museum and Dickinson, especially when both are victims in this instance,” Emma Ward, Dickinson’s managing director, said in a statement to Artnet.

Arnoud Odding, the museum’s director, first became interested in Constable’s 1824 painting A View of Hampstead Heath: Child’s Hill, Harrow in the Distance upon seeing it at Dickinson’s TEFAF booth in Maastricht in 2018.

The Rijksmuseum Twenthe did not respond to Artnet News’s request for comment.

Clarification: This article has been amended to clarify that a London court has dismissed the museum’s initial negligence claims.

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The Getty Bought an ‘Exceedingly Rare’ Gauguin Sculpture for a Reported $5 Million. There’s Just One Problem: It’s Fake

The sculpture was thought to be the largest and most unusual of Paul Gauguin's sculptures, of which he made very few.

Kate Brown, January 28, 2020

Head with Horns was formerly attributed to Paul Gauguin. Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images. A prized and rare sculpture by Paul Gauguin that was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum for a reported $3 million to $5 million has been deemed a fake.

The sculpture, titled Head with Horns, has been reattributed by researchers to an unknown artist and pulled from the museum’s permanent display, according to the Art Newspaper and Le Figaro. The institution acquired the work in 2002 from Wildenstein & Company, the powerful French-American art-dealing dynasty that is embroiled in a litany lawsuits.

Researchers made the change in attribution quietly last December, and the work was noticeably absent from recent Gauguin blockbusters at Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery in London.

The prime pieces of evidence linking the work to Gauguin were two photographs of the sculpture by the artist included in his Tahitian travelogue, Noa Noa. A 2002 press release from the Getty drawing attention to its resemblance to the artist suggested that it may have been a symbolic self-portrait.

“Sculpture by Gauguin is exceedingly rare, and this intriguing work stands out as a superb example,” Deborah Gribbon, then the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, said at the time of the acquisition. “We feel especially fortunate to be able to display Head with Horns, which will become a natural centerpiece of our installation of symbolist art.”

After being bought by Getty, the piece circulated the world, traveling to shows at Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, MoMA in New York, and the Museo delle Culture in Milan.

But the sculpture was never signed by Gauguin, and his photographs of it showed it atop a pedestal not carved in any of how known styles. Originally dated to between 1895 and 1897, which lines up the artist’s time in Tahiti, it is now thought to be from 1894, a time when Gauguin is known to have been in France.

The work has long been questions by some experts. Shortly after the Getty acquired it, Fabrice Fourmanoir, a collector of 19th-century Tahitian photography, found a picture of the sculpture by Jules Agostini captioned “Idole Marquisienne” (Marquisian Idol), suggesting that Agostini thought the piece was by an indigenous artist from the Marquesas Islands, then a part of French Polynesia.

In Agostini’s photo album, Head with Horns is shown next to a portrait of George Lagarde, a collector of ethnographic art who may have been the owner of the sculpture. The photographs both date to 1894.

The sculpture’s provenance was always a bit murky. It was included in a show at the Fondation Maeght in 1997 after being purchased, four years earlier, by Wildenstein & Company from a private Swiss collector.

The work was first attributed to Gauguin by Daniel Wildenstein, the author of a Gauguin catalogue raisonné of painting focusing on the years 1873 to 1888. Another volume, covering the years 1888 to 1903, is due at the end of 2020 but will not include sculptures, the Wildenstein Plattner Institute tells Artnet News. They said that, to date, the sculpture has not been submitted to the WPI’s Gauguin committee for research and examination.

This would not be the first time that the Wildensteins have been caught in a public controversy.

The French art-dealing family has been accused of evading taxes in France, hiding missing or stolen artworks, and even of trading artworks with the Nazis during World War II, all claims the family denies.

The Getty is now researching the sandalwood sculpture and its lacewood base to try to learn more about its origins. Some Polynesian art experts say its devilish horns suggest the iconography is not local, but comes from Christian and European sources. Another theory, floated by Fourmanoir, is that it was carved by a European tourist.

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Art experts warn of a surging market in fake prints

John Szoke, a dealer and specialist in Picasso, holds a real print by the artist, in his Manhattan office on Jan. 18, 2020. Spurred by advances in photomechanical reproduction, forgers are increasingly selling unauthorized copies of famous works on the internet, and elsewhere. Kyle Johnson/The New York Times.

by Milton Esterow

NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- In Basel, Swiss authorities are prosecuting a local art expert who they say sold hundreds of fake prints that he passed off online as the work of Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso and others over 10 years.

In New York, Adrienne R. Fields now spends much of her workweek scanning the internet for forged prints that pop up at website after website. She is head of the legal department for the Artists Rights Society, which protects the intellectual property rights of artists and their estates.

“It happens every day that Adrienne sends a ‘take down’ notice to a website,” said Ted Feder, president of the society.

The two cities, almost 4,000 miles apart, are both on the front lines of the fight against the sale of fake prints.

Since the dawn of the internet, the problem of phony art being sold has only grown, experts say, and the primary coin of the forgery realm has long been the fake print, which is relatively easy to create, often difficult to detect and typically priced low enough to attract undiscriminating novice buyers.

But now the problem seems to be escalating, according to law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe.

Timothy Carpenter, supervisory special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s art crime team, said that the proliferation of online art sales has deepened the problem. “Before, you had to find a way to get it to the market but e-commerce has changed the game,” he said.

The most prevalent fake prints are those falsely attributed to Lichtenstein and Warhol, experts said. But forgers have also brought to market multitudes of fake Picassos, Klees and Gerhard Richters, as well as phony works attributed to Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse.

Improvements in photomechanical reproduction techniques have made it easier for forgers to produce deceptive fake prints. “A real good reproduction can fool a lot of experts,” said John Szoke, a Manhattan dealer in Picasso and Edvard Munch prints. Detecting the forgeries is not simple, he said.

“It’s the color of the paper, the quality of the printing, the condition of the print, all of which you compare with the original,” he said. “And then you need years and years of experience.”

© 2020 The New York Times Company

https://artdaily.cc/news/120337/Art-experts-warn-of-a-surging-market-in-fake-prints#.XjBxP2hKiUk

In a Twist, Two Serial Art Thieves Confess to Having Hidden Klimt’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’ Inside a Wall So That It Might Be Recovered

"We have given a gift to the city by returning the canvas,” the men, who are charged in a separate burglary spree, wrote.

Naomi Rea, January 21, 2020

Gustav Klimt's Portrait of a lady (1916-1917). Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images.

In a stunning twist in an already strange tale, two men have confessed to stealing, and then sneakily returning, a Gustav Klimt painting to a gallery in Italy. The missing painting was recently uncovered by gardeners inside an external wall of the same gallery from which it was stolen some 24 years ago.

The extraordinary series of events occurred at the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in the Italian city of Piacenza. The police closed in on the pair of criminals after they wrote a letter to the local newspaper, Libertà, confessing to the decades-old crime.

“We are the authors of the theft of Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady, and we have given a gift to the city by returning the canvas,” the men, who are in their 60s, wrote. The pair were part of a crime ring that has been responsible for a number of burglaries in the area. The letter was written to one of the paper’s reporters, Ermanno Mariani, who had interviewed one of them when he was being tried for burglary several years ago.

The painting was discovered on December 10 by gardeners who were clearing ivy from an external wall. It was hidden in a trash bag inside an alcove behind a secret panel. On Friday, experts appointed by Italian prosecutors confirmed the authenticity of the work, and the pair were taken in for questioning.

The pair’s lawyer, Guido Gulieri, tells the Guardian that they claim to have returned the painting four years ago, and have given police the address of the house in which they say it had been stored before that time. “They have been obscure about the details but have always maintained that the painting was not in the cavity all of that time,” the lawyer said. “I’m not a technical expert, but it would have been damaged if it had been there for all those years.” (Artnet News reached out to Gulieri for comment but did not immediately hear back.)

Their story is corroborated by the findings of the conservation team, which reported the painting to be in good condition. It would be unlikely for a painting that had been stored in the alcove for 23 years to be completely undamaged.

The thieves made the recent confession more than 20 years after the February 22, 1997 theft, timing it to come after the expiration of the statute of limitations on the crime. Facing jail time for a separate burglary spree, they may have been attempting use the Klimt painting’s whereabouts as a bargaining chip in gunning for a reduced sentence. In their confession, they wrote that they had decided to tip off the public only after they were “sure not to incur further crimes,” and added that they “did not foresee the intervention of the gardener who, however, only anticipated us a little.”

The confession was timed alongside an imminent sentence from Italy’s Supreme Court. They will now serve seven years and two months, and four years and eight months, respectively, for “theft and receiving stolen goods” from targets including villas, apartments, and companies, according to Libertà.

While the police are still investigating the crime—it was reported on Friday that there was forensic evidence on the painting—their lawyer says they will not go to prison for the theft of the Klimt. “It is a very strange story,” Gulieri says. “They could have sold it or burned it… But the good news is, we have found the painting.”

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/klimt-thieves-confess-to-returning-the-stolen-painting-found-by-gardeners-in-an-italian-gallery-1757958?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=US%20News%20Morning%2010%20a.m.%20for%201%2F22%2F20&utm_term=New%20US%20Newsletter%20List

High-Flying Art Heiress Angela Gulbenkian Has Been Slapped With a New Lawsuit Claiming She Cheated a Collector Out of an Andy Warhol

The embattled art dealer is facing a multitude of charges.
Sarah Cascone, January 22, 2020

Angela Gulbenkian. Photo by Angela Gulbenkian via Instagram.

Fresh allegations of fraudulent art dealing by Angela Gulbenkian, a German woman who married into one of Europe’s wealthiest and most renowned art-collecting families, have cropped up in Germany.

In a complaint filed in Munich this month on behalf of an anonymous London art dealer, lawyer Hannes Hartung says Gulbenkian sold his client an Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth II print for £115,000 ($151,000). But she failed to give that money to the seller, according to the suit—which Hartung’s client only realized when the owner showed up demanding payment. The story was first reported by the Art Newspaper.

These are not the first such accusations levied against Gulbenkian. In March 2018, Hong Kong-based art advisor Mathieu Ticolat claimed to have paid $1.4 million for a Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture that was never delivered. Ticolat enlisted Christopher Marinello of Art Recovery International to get his money back in late 2017. The case has yet to be resolved, but criminal and civil charges are pending against Gulbenkian in both Germany and the UK, with trials scheduled for March and May.

Angela Gulbenkian arranged for the sale of this Andy Warhol print, but never delivered the payment to the original owner. Courtesy of Art Recovery International. According to a new lawsuit, Angela Gulbenkian arranged for the sale of this Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth II print, but never delivered payment to the original owner.

Courtesy of Art Recovery International.

“I assure you that if these cases took place in the United States, she’d be sitting in jail next to Anna Delvey,” Marinello told Artnet News. “There are other victims. I get calls from people all the time who were swindled by her, or who were about to be, but backed out after they read about my client’s case.”

“It’s exactly the same scam,” Hartung writes in the new complaint. “Gulbenkian again fails to complete an art transaction and again retains a large sum of money which she is clearly not entitled to.” He says “an international arrest warrant [should] be issued” due to “the seriousness of the offenses.”

Marinello says Gulbenkian banked on the Gulbenkian family name, which is synonymous with arts philanthropy, to trick unsuspecting collectors. “She’s still using the Gulbenkian art collection to lure in victims,” he said. “She’s trying to put deals together at this very moment. This woman is going down swinging, but anybody in their right mind would not do business with her.”

“We’re going after the money wherever we can find it, whether it’s her family or friends—whoever has touched these funds, we’re going to go after them,” he added. Artnet News’s attempts to reach Gulbenkian were unsuccessful.

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Painting found in Italy wall is stolen Klimt

The 55 by 65 cm (21 by 26 inches) expressionist work could be worth between 60 and 100 million euros ($67-111 million).

PIACENZA (AFP).- A painting found stashed inside a wall at an Italian museum has been confirmed as the stolen "Portrait of a Lady" by Austria's Gustav Klimt, prosecutors said on Friday, two decades after the artwork went missing.

The century-old painting was discovered concealed in an external wall by gardeners at the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza, northeast Italy, last month.

The museum estimates that the 55-by-65-centimetre (21-by-26-inch) expressionist work could be worth between 60 and 100 million euros ($67-111 million), but notes the difficulty in estimating the work as it has never been sold on the market.

"It is with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic," prosecutor Ornella Chicca told reporters. Museum officials had initially said they could not immediately determine whether the painting was indeed the stolen Klimt until scientific tests were undertaken. Painted in 1916-1917, the expressionist work depicts the face and torso of a young woman with brown hair, over an emerald green background.

The painting went missing in February 1997 while the museum was closed for work.

Wrapped in a bin bag
In December, gardeners removing ivy from a wall found a small ventilation space and discovered the painting inside, without a frame and wrapped in a black garbage bag.

The ivy covering the space had not been cut back for almost a decade. Chicca said further tests would determine whether the painting had been lingering inside the wall space since it was stolen, or whether it had been hidden there at a later date. "At the moment, we can't say whether it has been there all along," the prosecutor said.

Once those tests were completed, the painting will hopefully be returned to the gallery's walls, she said. Art expert Guido Cauzzi studied the work under infrared and ultraviolet light, comparing images to those taken during tests performed in 1996.

"The correspondence between the images allowed us to determine that it's definitely the original painting," Cauzzi said. The condition of the painting was "relatively good," he said. "It's gone through a few ordeals, but only needs some routine care, nothing particularly complicated," Cauzzi added. Fellow art expert Anna Seller has examined the picture's frame, as well as the seals and labels at the back and says all appear to be authentic.

In 1996, it was determined through X-ray analysis that the painting covered up another, that of the face of a different woman. The Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art takes its name from a rich art collector originally from Piacenza, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Milan, who entrusted a collection of 450 mostly 19th-century paintings to the municipality in 1931.

The museum's president Massimo Ferrari had told AFP, after the lost painting was first discovered in the wall in December, that there were "positive signs" that this was the genuine Klimt.

© Agence France-Presse

https://artdaily.cc/news/120160/Painting-found-in-Italy-wall-is-stolen-Klimt

Billionaire Banker Jaime Botin Gets an 18-Month Prison Sentence and a $58 Million Fine for Smuggling a Picasso Out of Spain

Banker stashed the Picasso on his yacht despite being denied an export permit.

Eileen Kinsella, January 16, 2020

Members of the French and Spanish Police with the seized Picasso, Head of a Young Woman (1906). Courtesy Douane Fraçaise.

Jaime Botin, a Spanish billionaire and member of the dynasty that has run Santander SA bank for more than 100 years, was sentenced today to 18 months in prison and received a €52.4 million ($58 million) fine for smuggling a celebrated work by Pablo Picasso out of Spain.

Botin, who was formerly head of Spanish lender Bankinter SA, was found guilty of contraband in culturally important goods. He was also forced to surrender the artwork itself, Picasso’s Head of a Young Woman, which is valued at €26 million ($29 million). (He has a net worth of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes,)

The Picasso was seized from Botin’s yacht in Corsica, after he took it there in defiance of court orders mandating that he keep it in Spain. Now, the painting is in the custody of the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, until further notice.

According to a Reuters report, Botin, 83, has ten days to appeal the decision. He is unlikely to serve the prison time ordered due to his age and the fact that he is a first-time offender, the report notes.

The yacht Adix, owned by Spanish Santander banking group and flying a British flag, sails off Testa beach on August 4, 2015, in Pianottoli Caldarello, Corsica, four days after French customs seized a Picasso on board considered a national treasure by Spain. Photo: Pascal Pochard Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images.

Spain’s laws on the protection of cultural heritage are said to be among the strictest in Europe. Any work of art older than 100 years is considered a national treasure and thus requires an export permit. Botin applied for an export permit for the Picasso, but was rejected.

Botin acquired the Picasso in 1977, Bloomberg reported, citing UK website Artlyst. It hails from the artist’s pre-Cubist “Rose” period.

Spanish authorities seem to have been observing Botin for some time. They had long suspected him of planning to sell the painting, according to Bloomberg. In 2012, he authorized Christie’s auction house to seek an export permit from Madrid to London, Spanish judge Elena Gonzalez concluded in her ruling.

Internal email at Christie’s presented as evidence during Botin’s trial show the painting was being billed as one of the top draws at an auction scheduled for February 2013.

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Russian billionaire loses Monaco battle with art dealer

In this file photo taken on March 29, 2018, Monaco's football club Russian President Dmitri Rybolovlev arrives for a training session at training camp in La Turbie near Monaco. Court decision on request to cancel fraud trial of Monaco FC owner, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, is expected on December 12, 2019. VALERY HACHE / AFP. by Claudine Renaud

NICE (AFP).- Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev has lost a case in Monaco against a top art dealer he accused of swindling him out of hundreds of millions of dollars, his lawyers said on Thursday.

Rybolovlev, who owns AS Monaco football club, accused Swiss dealer Yves Bouvier of charging him inflated prices on dozens of artworks he acquired for more than $2.1 billion (1.9 billion euros). The Monaco court of appeal said the "entire investigation was carried out in a partial and unfair manner" -- a major setback for Rybolovlev, whose five-year feud with Bouvier has played out in courts in five countries.

Bouvier hailed it as "yet another victory" after favourable court rulings in Singapore, Hong Kong and New York. His lawyer Franck Michel accused Rybolovlev of concocting a case against the art dealer in Monaco as part of a plot to destroy Bouvier's art shipping and storage business. However, one of Rybolovlev's lawyers, Herve Temine, stressed that Bouvier was still being investigated in Switzerland and promised to appeal against the Monaco ruling.

"Mr Bouvier should not rejoice because this in no way affects the substance of the case for giant fraud of which he is accused," he said. Rybolovlev commissioned Bouvier to help build up an art collection to rival a small museum -- including works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Rodin, Matisse and Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi", which Rybolovlev sold at auction in 2017 for a record $450 million. But their relationship soured when Rybolovlev accused Bouvier of overcharging him.

Rybolovlev was himself charged with bribery and influence peddling and Monaco's justice minister was forced to retire over claims he accepted bribes. Rybolovlev made his fortune in the fertiliser business after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Forbes business magazine ranks him number 224 on its list of the world's richest people for 2019, with a net worth of $6.8 billion.

© Agence France-Presse
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