WELLY FOR FREE TELLY
MONA LISA GOES WALKIES
MULTI-MILLION POUND HEISTS T
IN the week of Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday we wish many happy returns to a museum hit by a theft of his work.
Raiders smashed through a glass door and, on the
167th anniversary of his birth, took a £5million Van Gogh. Spring Garden was on loan to the museum in
Laren, Holland. Its director Jan Rudolph de Lorm said he was “incredibly p ***** d off” over the theft. Art detective, Arthur Brand, known for finding work
MANY believe it was the greatest art theft of the
20th century – making off with the Mona Lisa.
In 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia walked into the Louvre in Paris dressed in the staff uniform and hid in a cupboard.
When the coast was clear he calmly took Leonardo da Vinci’s painting down, removed its frame, rolled it up in his coat and strolled out.
Handyman Peruggia kept the Mona Lisa in his apartment for stolen by the Nazis, is already on the case. The heist at the museum, closed because of Covid-19, was straightforward. Unlike other art thefts, which have featured fast boats, exploding cars, Spider-man, Goldfinger and an ex-pro footballer who couldn’t help but give the game away. two years before heading to his home country of Italy. He was caught after contacting an art dealer there.
When police got hold of the painting it was exhibited all over Italy with newspapers everywhere celebrating – and her smile went global.
The Louvre got their girl back, and beefed up security.
Peruggia said he stole the painting for “patriotic reasons” telling police he thought it belonged to Italy.
AFTER being fined for not paying his TV licence, an unemployed bus driver decided to protest – by stealing a Goya masterpiece.
Kempton Bunton, a 61-year-old pipe-smoking Geordie, then hid the Old Master in his wardrobe.
He was outraged that £140,000 had been spent saving the painting of the Duke of Wellington for London’s National Gallery at the same time a £4 TV licence fee levy was being made on pensioners.
The crime whipped up the nation, with a £5,000 reward offered.
Newspapers started receiving notes ransoming the piece to cover the licence fee costs for the elderly and needy.
After an anonymous tip to the Daily Mirror, the painting was found in a left luggage locker at Birmingham New Street station.
Kempton confessed to nicking the painting in July 1965.
But his defence team argued he had taken it but did not intend to keep it – so in the end he served just three months for stealing the frame. It later emerged his sons were in on the job.
Filming started this year on a movie of the heist, starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.