Chapter 15

Summary

• Alexandre Von der Mühll, an inspector who specializes in art crime in Switzerland, is looking at surveillance footage from Alexis Forel Museum. A man and woman, caught on a hidden camera, steal a serving platter.
• Von der Mühll is investigating a series of art thefts occurring in daylight. He identifies that the thieves exclusively steal late Renaissance and Flemish art, suggesting that they are knowledgeable about art.
• Despite their precision, Von der Mühll believes the thieves’ overconfidence will ultimately lead to their arrest. They often overlook hidden cameras and leave behind empty frames as taunts.
• The stolen pieces are not typically the most famous items, but lesser-known works that are easier to sell. As art prices have increased over time, so has theft, making art and antiquities theft one of the world's highest-grossing criminal trades.
• Pablo Picasso is identified as the most stolen artist, with roughly 1,000 of his works stolen. Most notably, 118 Picassos were stolen from a single exhibition at the Papal Palace in Avignon, France, in 1976. The heist led to the development of specialized art-police squads around the world.
• Italian law enforcement formed the first national art-crime unit in 1969, and there are now around 300 detectives in the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. Other countries have followed suit, with varying numbers of detectives, the United States even has an FBI Art Crime Team.
• French law enforcement's Office for the Fight Against Trafficking in Cultural Goods is considered highly skilled. During the summer of 1996, Bernard Darties, an agent in this office, issued a memo that linked fourteen art thefts in France that may be related to the Swiss cases that Von der Mühll is investigating.