Society party animals plunder $ 1 mil in art

By TINA MOORE, GINA DAIDONE and MAX JAEGER If [the art doesn’t] doesn come back, back I will do my best to put [tthe thief] ] in jail. Alexis Gregory (left)

Who knew high society could stoop so low!

A Manhattan socialite discovered someone had stolen $1 million in precious 16th-century art from his tony Fifth Avenue home after he held a swanky soiree there Friday.

Alexis Gregory, 81, had 26 guests over to his pad at 907 Fifth Ave. Friday evening for a piano recital followed by an art exhibit.

After everyone had left, at around 11:30 p.m., housekeeper Luc Marina Rodriguez discovered that as many as eight golden figurines were missing from Gregory’s collection, according to law-enforcement sources.

“I am very upset,” Gregory told The Post by phone Monday, adding nothing like this has ever happened to him. “I hope it doesn’t happen again.”

His message to the thief: “If [the art doesn’t] come back, I will do my best to put them in jail.”

One missing curio was a crucifix that was pried off of its stand; another was a pendant inset with gemstones, sources said.

Gregory, an art collector and publisher by trade, runs in fineart and high-society circles, but it was not clear how close he is to the 26 guests he invited over Friday night. He declined to comment on his relationship to them, but a representative answering the phone at his apartment called the attendees “associates.”

There was no private security hired to staff the event, sources added.

Gregor graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in art history.

“I had traveled around Europe quite a lot, seen an awful lot of museums, painting, art, sculpture,” the Zurich-born impresario told The New York Times in 1980 about his undergraduate days. “At that point I thought I would go, basically, into the museum business — curating.”

But his father, a financier and real-estate mogul, insisted he study business, so he earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, according to the Times.

Gregory founded Vendome Press, which publishes books of fine art and architecture, in 1980. The imprint focuses on European — particularly French — art and is named for the Parisian public square the Place Vendôme, according to the company Web site.

Police hoped to review security footage at Gregory’s upscale Lenox Hill building — where residences overlooking Central Park routinely sell for $5 million or more — but came up short as of Monday evening, law-enforcement sources said. tmoore@nypost.com