“What happened here was simply unimaginable.”
Also from Caterina.net, this astonishing story by Alan Riding for The New York Times about one man’s theft of works of art worth perhaps $1.4 billion.
PARIS, May 16 — For years Stéphane Breitwieser, a youthful-looking Frenchman, traveled through Europe working as a waiter, and in his off hours visited out-of-the-way museums where he looked for opportunities to walk off with what he liked. He stashed stolen oil paintings, rare musical instruments and other art objects in his private collection in his mother’s home in Mulhouse, in eastern France, investigators said.
Last November his luck ran out at a museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, and he was arrested on charges of stealing a bugle. On learning of the arrest, the police said, his mother chopped up the oil paintings, which were left for trash collection, and dumped other art objects in a canal.
You refuse to believe such a thing is possible. The thefts include Brueghel’s “Cheat Profiting From His Master,” stolen from a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1997; Watteau’s drawing of “Two Men,” stolen from a museum in Montpellier, France, in 1999; François Boucher’s “Sleeping Shepherd,” stolen from a museum in Blois, France, in 1996 and Corneille de Lyon’s “Mary, Queen of Scots,” also stolen from the museum in Blois in 1996.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2002.05.18 (Sat) • 16:36
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