Breitwieser recalls his early, indiscriminate thefts across a millennium of art, admitting many pieces lost their allure. As the attic collection grows, Breitwieser and Anne‑Catherine discuss what draws them to certain works, and Breitwieser debates aesthetics with Meichler at the frame shop. Study and reflection refine his taste to a clear “sweet spot”: northern European works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, toward which his devotion remains steady.

The narrative broadens to why art exists at all, juxtaposing Darwinian efficiency with theories that art arises from leisure and cognitive freedom. Surveys show common preferences (landscapes, blue; not jagged shapes or orange), yet personal attraction remains individual. Neuroscientist Semir Zeki’s MRI research locates aesthetic response in the medial orbital‑frontal cortex, suggesting a neural basis for beauty.

Breitwieser is captivated by oil painting’s translucence and luminosity, noting northern Europe’s Renaissance shift to oil while southern centers retained tempera’s muted effect. He is drawn to genre scenes and the era’s artistic liberation from church dictates, when artists defined their own imagery and began signing works—an authenticity that resonates with him.

He dismisses most modern art and even some Renaissance stars, sensing patron‑driven servitude and inattentive brilliance that, to him, undercuts sincerity. Practicality reinforces taste: he favors cabinet paintings—small, middle‑class pieces easy to conceal and suited to the attic. Likewise, he covets pre‑industrial domestic objects, seeing in handmade craft the height of human skill before mass production’s “ugliness.” He steals to preserve that vanishing beauty in his private refuge.