In broad daylight, during opening hours, in peak tourist season, two men entered the Rodin Hall of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen and quickly made off with a 25.5 cm bronze bust by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).  The museum heist was speedy and smoothly executed. 

Part of the Danish museum's collection for 95 years, the stolen artwork was one of approximately 200 busts Rodin created in the form of "The Man with the Broken Nose". The inspiration for which is believed to have been based upon the features of an elderly workman named “Bibi” from the Saint-Marcel district of Paris.  According to expert Jérôme Le Blay, formerly of the Musée Rodin and the founder of the Comité Rodin, these 200 artworks appear in as many as six distinct versions, some forty of which he believes are similar to the one stolen from the Glyptotek. 

Having cased the museum nine days earlier, the brazen theft took place on the 16th of July in 2015.  During two separate visits the perpetrators disguised themselves as nondescript visiting tourists and entered into the Dahlerup Wing, the oldest part of the museum.  As verified by Copenhagen Police surveillance footage released one month after the theft, the two criminals were approximately 30 to 40 years of age and of average height, between 170-175 cm tall.

During their first reconnaissance foray inside the museum, the pair detached the bronze sculpture from its plinth, tilting it from its base and then replacing the object to its proper position when no alarm was signalled.  During their second visit, the two individuals entered the museum separately.  With no guard present in the gallery where the bronze was displayed, the first, wearing a greyish blue baseball cap, glasses, and a plaid shirt, feigned interest in another Rodin sculpture located in the same gallery, Les Bourgeois de Calais.  This allowed him to kill time without raising suspicion while awaiting the arrival of his accomplice.  

The second man, wearing shorts, a light-coloured panama hat and dark sunglasses, entered the museum with two seperate mail bags, each strapped across his body; one in the front and one towards the back.  He is seen on CCTV stills release by police casually entering the Rodin gallery, where he is seen joining up with his accomplice.  

Once together in the Rodin Gallery, just off the museum's foyer, the straw hatted man removed his second bag and passed it over to his waiting accomplice.  This person in turn placed the empty bag on his own shoulder before the pair moved closer to the Rodin bust.  It is then that they made the first of two attempts to remove the statue from its pedestal.  Stalled briefly, mid-theft, when a visitor arrived, the two waited patiently while first one, then two individuals moved into and out of the gallery. 

Once the potential witnesses had left the gallery, the man in the straw hat continued to stand lookout from inside the gallery while also keeping his eyes on the connecting rooms.  When the coast was finally clear, his baseball hat-wearing accomplice deftly removed the bust from its unalarmed position and quickly placed the sculpture in the bag passed to him earlier.  The pair then exited the Copenhagen museum separately, with the museum's guards and guests none the wiser.

Rodin Gallery of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum.  Arrow pointing to the pedestal were the sculpture once was.

The theft reportedly took only twelve minutes and went undetected until an employee, returning from vacation noticed the artwork was not in its proper place. 

"Man with the Broken Nose" by Auguste Rodin  Stolen from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum on July 16, 2015

Yet, despite sharing security footage with news agencies and a request to the general public should anyone recognized the thieves, few viable leads developed.   Having reached a dead end police formally closed their investigation without a recovery in April 2016.

What are the chances of this sculpture being recovered?

Despite the many counterfeit Rodin sculptures which have polluted the market, buyers' enthusiasm for the pre-eminent sculptor of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist era has not diminished and with time it is possible that this hot work of art might still bubble up on the art market.  In July 2015 Rodin's sculpture "Young Girl With a Serpent" (circa 1886), came up for auction at Christie's and was identified by staff working at Art Recovery International as an artwork stolen from a Beverly Hills couple's home 24 years earlier.

For now the curator's at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum have still to wait, very, very patiently.

By Lynda Albertson

On July 16, 2015 two men posing as tourists brazenly walked in to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen and stole a bronze bust  from the Dahlerup Wing during broad daylight. Law enforcement authorities, announcing the theft today, have only today released details on the theft to the public, which at first blush, seems to indicate that the two suspects worked in a coordinated fashion.

Police surveillance footage recorded two men, approximately 30 to 40 years of age and of average build, between 170-175cm tall, entering and exiting the gallery where the artwork was on display, leaving the premises with the bust concealed first in a plastic bag and then inside a second bag, before calmly strolling out of the museum. The theft took just twelve minutes to execute and went undetected by not only patrons but also the museum’s security personnel.

Copenhagen daily Politiken spoke with inspector Ove Randrup of Copenhagen police's robbery and theft unit who advised them that surveillance camera footage shows that the men had visited the museum one week earlier, disconnecting the bust's alarm and unfastening the sculpture from its base.

The stolen artwork, ‘The Man with the Broken Nose’ was created by François Auguste René Rodin and is one of several artworks created by the artist depicting this subject. Estimates of the value of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum bust have been quoted at two million krone ($300,000) by Danish news agencies. 

It is believed that Rodin's subject for the original bust was an elderly workman named “Bibi” from the Saint-Marcel district of Paris. In creating the original clay sculpture, from which the Danish copy was modelled, Rodin chose to emphasize certain features – the broken nose, the style of the beard, and the subject's deep facial lines.  Some believe his attempt was created as a parallel between this workman’s chiseled and work-weary face and Michelangelo’s during his later years.

The prototype for the stolen bust was created in clay early in Rodin’s career, between 1862 and 1863, while the sculptor worked as an apprentice to more conventional sculptors. Working on the original piece for more than a year he referred to the work as "the first good piece of modelling I ever did."

A marble example of the clay original can be found at the Musée Rodin in Paris.

Due to its popularity, Rodin made many casts of “The Man with the Broken Nose. The version  at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum has been in the Danish collection for 95 years.

As many as 15 versions of this sculpture were on display together at a previous exhibition at the Fogg Museum at Harvard, many of which are currently held in private collections.  A video, showing a close-up of the stolen bronze in situ in the Rodin Gallery of the the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum is attached below and can be seen in high resolution at the 3.24 minute mark.   

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek was founded by the brewer Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914) and is one of Copenhagen’s most prominent art museums. It was named after Jacobson’s brewery with the addition of "Glyptotek", meaning collection of sculpture. The museum has a comprehensive collection of antique sculpture from the ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, as well as works by Rodin, Degas and other French 19th Century artists. The museum has 35 works by Rodin, in bronze, marble and plaster.

The Danish Museum also holds the largest Etruscan collection outside Italy including antiquities clearly looted in origin including an Etruscan calesse, or two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage, excavated near Fara in Sabina, just north of Rome. At the core of the dispute between Italy and the Denmark museum are Etruscan and Greco-Roman objects Italian authorities say were purchased from Bob Hecht and Giacomo Medici.