Stealing beauty
1Tompkins’ favourite piece of stolen art: The Four
Horses of the Basilica San Marco — taken from Rome to Constantinople around 400-500CE, then from there to Venice by the Fourth Crusade in the opening years of the 13th century, then to Paris by Napoleon, but back again to Venice after a mere 17 years. They are the only surviving cast quadriga (a chariot drawn by four horses) from the Classical World and it’s extraordinary they’ve survived at all. They were moved from their centuries-old home above the main door to the Basilica, looking out across the Piazza San Marco in Venice, in the 1980s to much reduced circumstances inside a small museum upstairs in the Basilica. But they are still a charismatic and haunting and astounding art work.
2Stolen and still missing: Poppy Flowers (also known as Vase and Flowers or Vase with
Viscaria) was painted by Vincent van Gogh in about 1887, possibly as a tribute to an older artist, Adolphe Monticelli, whose work influenced van Gogh’s. Though the painting is relatively small, it’s believed to be worth about US$50 million. It was taken from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo in 2010 and, remarkably, had already been stolen once before in 1977 but recovered 10 years later. It remains missing, despite a substantial reward on offer for its recovery.
3Plundered by the Nazis but returned 70 years later: Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele BlochBauer was the star of the Helen Mirren film Lady
in Gold. Painted in Vienna in the early 20th century, it was taken by the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and ended up in the Galerie Belvedere in Vienna after the war. There followed the long obstruction of its return to owner Ferdinand BlochBauer’s heirs by the Austrian state and the Viennese art establishment. Its return after arbitration ending up back on public display in New York, is recognition of the injustice done by its theft. The Lady’s long story is a remarkable tale that epitomises much of the history of art crime during war.
4Stolen but recovered: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona
Lisa — she of the enigmatic smile — hangs in the Musee du Louvre in Paris and is impossible to value. The painting was stolen in 1911 and the Louvre closed for an entire week as the theft was ineptly investigated. It was returned to the Louvre three years later, after the thief, former Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, tried to sell it in his native Italy. He’d kept the painting in a suitcase in his Paris apartment for much of the time he’d had it, taking it out occasionally to gaze at.
5Local mystery: Stolen from Christchurch 75 years ago and still badly missed: Solomon J. Solomon’s Psyche. This large, typically Victorian, painting exists now only in black and white photographs. It was taken during an overnight burglary of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch in June 1942, with the frame and the stretcher left behind.
Psyche had originally been purchased by the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1907, during Christchurch’s 1906-1907 International Exhibition, and donated to the Robert McDougall Gallery in the early 1930s. The painting has never been seen since that fateful June night.