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Showing posts with label religious art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious art. Show all posts

March 30, 2024

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Stolen Saint: Ukraine Authorities Retrieve the Holy Warrior Bas-Relief of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki from an Online Auction


After a rare bas-relief appeared in an online auction, with an asking price of 210 thousand Ukrainian Hryvni, historians with the National Museum of the History of Ukraine notified law enforcement about the suspicious upcoming sale. Believed by its wear to be a wind-blown architectural element, which at some point adorned the exterior façade of the unknown 12 to 13th century "white stone" church, experts believed the stone sculpture had been removed by looters in contravention of national law, based on the fact of illegal appropriation by a person of someone else's property or treasure that has been found or accidentally found in his possession, which has special historical, scientific, artistic or cultural value (Part 1 of Article 193 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

Believed to depict Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki (as a Holy Warrior), the Western Romanesque-styled limestone carving could only come from areas where this specific saint was honoured, i.e. Greece, Bulgaria, or more likely, Galicia–Volyn, the former principality in post-Kyivan Rus whose structures were built in the late twelfth century through the middle of the fourteenth century.  The rural landscape of this area, now predominantly situated in western Ukraine, is speckled with forgotten and deserted Roman Catholic churches (kościoły), poignant relics of bygone settlements that once flourished in the region.

Following a lengthy two year investigation, headed by Viktor Tymchuk of the Volyn Regional Prosecutor's Office and Svitlana Nedumova, the head of criminal proceedings and prosecutor of the Lutsk District Prosecutor's Office, assisted by the inquest section of the Lutsk District Police Department in the Volyn Region, the bas-relief was seized. 


This week, on March 27th, a handover ceremony was held at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine.  There, Andriy Kostin, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, entrusted the bas-relief of Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki to the museum, where it will remain on display as part of the "Archaeologist's Day: Rescued Treasures" exhibition.   The Prosecutor General thanked his colleagues from the Lutsk District Prosecutor's Office for their prompt response to the statement of the General Director of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, Fedor Androshchuk, regarding the monument identified during the online auction. 

Over the past three years, Ukraine's National Police and its Security Service (SBU), under the procedural guidance of the prosecutor's office, have investigated more than 300 crimes related to the theft, illegal trade, and smuggling of monuments.  

April 23, 2021

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Stealing venerated relics: An ancient pastime that lives on today

The Cistercian abbey of San Galgano

The Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale - TPC) have recovered the Reliquary of San Galgano, a work possibly attributed to the 14th-century goldsmith Ugolino di Vieri.  The Medieval Christian object of faith was stolen from the Seminario Arcivescovile Siena more than 30 years ago, in 1989.

Over time, by accident and changes, little remains of San Galgano except for some of the church's relics and a fantastic sword which is a story unto itself.  Most of the accessory structures of the Cistercian abbey are gone, leaving us with only the roofless building's stone skeleton with its grouped piers and ribbed vaults.  Despite its ruin, it is an impressive Gothic architectural masterpiece and one of the most exquisite religious structures in Tuscany. 

Recovered along with ten other stolen works of art, the Reliquary of San Galgano's is believed to have been stolen as a theft to order.   And as sacrilegious as that may sound, given what reliquaries are used for, stealing venerated religious objects is not as uncommon as one would like to think.  

Nor should the theft of these types of liturgical items be underestimated, as their intrinsic worth is more than the sum of their antiquarian value.  Their uniqueness being more that just the costly materials they are made from, or the fame of the artist who crafted them.

Creepy though it may be, their true value lies in the “valueless.” For its the bits and pieces, things like the skull, jaw, left ilium, or even the foreskin of the departed that catch the eye of Church devotees as well as thieves.  In 1087, shortly before the First Crusade, sixty-two sailors from Bari stole the actual bones of St. Nicholas, interred at a church in Myra, a city in modern-day Turkey.  Back then, in the beginning of the High Middle Ages, religious relics were big business. Having a relic brought pilgrims, and with pilgrims came money. So it's no small wonder that a new church, the Pontifical Basilica di San Nicola, was built afer his bones were taken, as Nicholas' disinterred remains drew quite an audience.

St. Catherine of Siena, who died in Rome in 1839 lies buried inside the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Her dismembered holy head however, was parted from her body and secreted back to her home town where her patrons in Siena inserted it into a gilt bust of bronze. Other parts of her body are scattered inside and outside of Italy.

But not all thefts where committed by the religiously well intentioned, intent on veneration.  Flash forward to the modern era and the reliquary of San Franco, known as the Hermit of Gran Sasso, was stolen in Assorgi in 1974 only to be found later with an antique dealer in Milan.  Likewise, the remains of the immensely influential philosopher  St. Thomas Aquinas were stolen in Naples in 1978 with some saying all that was left was an odor of sanctity.  His silver case ended up as a religious novelty on a collector's shelf.

Having said that, not all church thieves steal for a quick and easy payout. Some commit acts which are even more blasphemous, ghoulishly holding the very bones of the venerated hostage.   On November 7, 1981 two men armed with guns struck the Chiesa di San Geremia in the Cannaregio area of Venice. Breaking into a glass coffin on the main altar, the hooligans snatched the wrapped remains of Saint Lucia, one of the early church's most famous martyrs, leaving the scene so quickly they left her head and mask behind.  

Six and a half years later, on April 18, 1988, the remains of Pope Celestino V were swiped from the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L'Aquila.  Thankfully, his bones were recovered two days later in a niche of the cemetery of Cornelle and Roccapassa where the crooks had parked the Pope temporarily, hoping to lay low until the investigation died down.  

A year later thieves also took the bones of the peasant who became a friar, St. Joseph of Copertino (the patron saint of flyers).  And, as recently as 2020, a gold and crystal casing holding droplets of blood from Pope John Paul II was nicked from the  Cathedral in Spoleto.

Despite breaking one of the Church's Ten Commandments, no one but the thief and his maker may understand what provoked each of these individuals to steal a particular relic, or in the case of the Reliquary of San Galgano, why the thief's sponsor coveted this particular item. But it is up against this backdrop that we can understand a little bit why some see the return as a small miracle.

The restitution ceremony for this and the other recovered artworks will be held at 3:00 pm on Monday, April 26th at the Sala del Palazzo Arcivescovile di Siena.  Presided over by Italy's Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini, as well as the cardinal, his most reverend eminence, Augusto Paolo Lojudice, Roberto Ricciardi, Commander of the Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage; Barabra Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums and Gianluigi Marmora, Commander of the Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Palermo there is sure to be an interesting story to tell. 

The event will also be "live" streamed on the Archidiocesi di Siena YouTube channel should you like to listen in. 

April 3, 2020

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Revisiting the clues of a theft: the case of the theft at the Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza


Sometimes it is good to go back and review old blog posts and provide updates as it is not always possible to track every case of theft when not widely publicised, and sometimes the clues left behind by one set of thieves can be useful in examining the methods of detecting criminal actors in other thefts.  Such is the case of the theft of a small panel painting "Crucifixion and Descent into Limbo" stolen from the Italian city of Faenza.

Vestibule, Maestro of Faenza Sec. XIII
"Crucifixion and descent into limbo"
35x28 cm.  + frame 15 cm., N. inv. 98
Image Credit: Pinacoteca Comunale
di Faenza
Two years ago, on Thursday morning, March 01, 2018, a small panel painting, dating back to the 1200s attributed to the Maestro of Faenza was reported stolen from the Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza.  The oldest museum in the city, the museum's collection was established in 1797, when the municipality purchased the private collection of Giuseppe Zauli, much of which centered on paintings and sculptures from the 13th to the 18th century.

The stolen panel painting, attributed to the Maestro of Faenza, depicts two scenes, the crucifixion of Christ with the cross in the center on the top portion of the panel followed by Christ's descent into limbo with angels and saints on the bottom.  The framed panel, which dates back to the thirteenth century, had been on public display in the Pinacoteca's Hall of the Vestibule, where it was hung just to the left of the Crocefisso del Maestro Francescano in Gallery 6. 

According to a televised report given at the time by Claudio Casadio, the director of the Pinacoteca, the theft was discovered during a morning walkthrough by personnel who discovered the empty frame and backboard mounting discarded in the gallery where the artwork had been hung.  Given the panel painting's small size, the artwork may have been hidden under the thief's winter clothing and snatched at some point during the museum's opening hours though the date of the theft itself and the potential methodology used by the criminal was not defined publicly at the time the city announced the theft.

Recovered Sant'Ambrogio
di Giusto de' Menabuoi
Sometimes in investigative work, silence is golden. 

Fast forward to just a few months later, and the Faenza artwork was recovered, found in the home of an individual in Bologna, hidden in a piece of furniture, along with two other recently stolen paintings: a Sant'Ambrogio di Giusto de' Menabuoi stolen from the Pinacoteca di Bologna just a few days after the Faenza theft and a 17th century Portrait of a Woman stolen in mid March from the Museo Civico di San Domenico in Imola.

Reconstructing the methodology of the thefts lead to the subject being identified. 

At the time of the thefts, police kept some of the clues regarding the thief's modus operandi to themselves.  The thief which targeted the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, where a work by the artist Giusto de 'Menabuoi had been removed, stole the artwork during the museum's opening hours.  Likewise, the timing of the thefts from the Museo Civico di San Domenico and the Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza had strong similarities, details, investigators preferred not to disclose to protect their investigations.

During their investigations the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Bologna, in collaboration with the Investigative Unit of the Provincial Command and with the Companies of Faenza and Imola spent time comparing and contrasting the security footage looking for clues and similarities and were subsequently able to identify a single individual in the footage with the same physiognomy, immortalised by CCTV security cameras in the museums and in the nearby civic spaces.

Shortly after the suspect's description was identified, an individual with the same distinct physical profile was identified visiting another museum in the city of  Bologna and acting suspiciously, perhaps either casing the museum for a future theft or with the intent of stealing another painting that very day.  Interrupted from his activity, law enforcement then followed the individual back through the streets of Bologna watching him until he returned to his place of residence.

With the house identified, and with the CCTV footage to back up their hunch, a search warrant was issued by the judicial authorities and the man's house was searched.  Inside, the officers recovered not only the three historic works of art, but most importantly, the incriminating clothing worn during one of the three heists.

All the artworks were returned to their respective institutions in just under two months. Not bad.  Let's hope the recent Van Gogh theft in the Netherlands at the Singer Laren Museum has an equally expedient, and happy, ending.




March 2, 2018

Friday, March 02, 2018 - ,,,,, No comments

Museum Theft: Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza - Faenza, Italy

Vestibule, Maestro of Faenza Sec. XIII
Crucifixion and descent into limbo
panel painting, 35x28 cm.  + frame 15 cm., N. inv. 98
Image Credit: Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza
Discovered missing on Thursday morning, March 01, 2018, a small panel painting, dating back to the 1200s attributed to the Maestro of Faenza has been reported stolen from the Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza.

The oldest Museum in Faenza, established in 1797, when the municipality purchased Giuseppe Zauli's art collection, the Pinacoteca's core collection centers on paintings and sculptures from the 13th to the 18th century. The stolen panel painting, attributed to the Maestro of Faenza, depicts two scenes, the crucifixion of Christ on the top portion of the panel and his descent into limbo on the bottom.  The framed panel had been on public display in the Hall of the Vestibule, where it was hung to the left of the Crocefisso del Maestro Francescano in Gallery 6. 

According to a televised report given by Claudio Casadio, the director of the Pinacoteca, the theft was discovered during a morning walkthrough by personnel on Monday who discovered the empty frame and backboard mounting discarded in the gallery where the artwork had been hung.  


Given the panel painting's small size, the artwork may have been hidden under  the thief's winter clothing at some point during museum opening hours though the date of the theft itself still unclear. 


This is the third theft of sacred art in Italy to have occured in a one week period.  All three thefts have occured in the region of Emilia-Romagna. 

During an early morning religious service at the Chiesa del Suffragio in Rimini a thief or thieves stole the crown and veil of a Madonna, Our Lady of Sorrows,  a statue dating back to the 1700s from the Church’s main nave.  The theft apparently occurred while mass was taking place in a smaller adjoining side chapel. 

An almost identical theft took also was carried out at the Cathedral of Cervia,  in the province of Ravenna, where the crown adorning a statue of Our Lady of Fire also disappeared.

Two of these thefts, the one in Faenza and Cervia both occurred in the province of Ravenna.  The third theft in Rimini occured in a coastal town in the same region (Emilia-Romagna). 

Director Claudio Casadio, the director of the Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza believes the theft from his museum gallery is indisputably a theft to order, given the object is well documented in public records and would be unsellable on the licit art market. If his assumption is correct, and coupled with these other two thefts, the string of the events seem to illustrate an interesting organizational structure to a coordinated series of thefts, likely committed to sustain the black market for religious art.

The theft is being investigated by the Carabinieri. 

July 29, 2013

Monday, July 29, 2013 - ,,, No comments

Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, The Netherlands: "Bling bling" museum theft and religious art

by Jacobiene Kuijpers, ARCA 2013 Student

On 29 January of 2013 at half past two in the afternoon, two young men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas drove on a moped in the city centre of Utrecht in the Netherlands. They stopped in front of the Museum Catharijneconvent, the national museum of religious art housed in a former cloister. One of the men walked towards a glass side door of the museum then smashed the door several times with a hammer until the security glass broke. The flight of stairs towards the ‘treasure room’ was right in front of him and he ran down them, focusing his attention immediately on a gold plated silver beam-monstrance adorned with numerous diamond elements and other precious stones insured at €250,000.[1] The glass case in which the vitrine was placed was not as stable as the thief thought. When trying to smash it with his hammer, he knocked over the entire base. As the entire vitrine including the object hit the floor, the glass shattered and the thief gathered the pieces of the object, putting parts of it in his too small bag and the rest under his arm and ran back up. The thief appeared clumsy, dropping the piece and picking it back up while crouching trough the glass door he smashed on his way in. [2] His conspirator was waiting for him on the same spot so he ran to the moped to take off. Before he could leave the courtyard, museum guards caught up with him and after a short wrestle they managed to confiscate the bag, which held some pieces of the monstrance. The thieves drove away with the rest, it took them less then two minutes to steal (part of) the monstrance.

The police managed to find the moped in the neighbourhood, the thieves must have had a get-away car either parked in the area or picking them up, suggesting the involvement of a third person. The moped turned out to have been stolen in Germany. During the police investigation it became known that the pieces of the monstrance in the bag that was saved by the museum guards were the most valuable, it held all of the precious stones. This was presented in Dutch media on 13 February, together with the CCTV footage. A police spokesman mentioned that the object held by the thieves was as good as worthless on the open market. The piece was incomplete and the value of the gold and silver after melting the object would hardly weigh up to the costs. The insurance company of the museum installed a reward for the tip that would lead to the return of the monstrance. That same evening the police managed to arrest three men of 21, 25 and 35 years old. They were seen placing the monstrance wrapped in plastic in a car, the police followed the car and halted it on the highway towards Belgium. The monstrance was returned to the museum, some of the adornments were missing and it was damaged. After restoration it was back on display in the museum in May. The prosecution of the three men is still in process.

Looking at circumstantial events learns that there was a theft of another monstrance from a Dutch museum a year earlier, which could have served as an example to the thieves in this case.[3] Last year, the thieves in the Museum Gouda got away with their monstrance in 30 seconds and were not prosecuted, suggesting it is an easy and fast way to make money, motivating the Utrecht thieves and giving them a suitable target, the monstrance. After the Museum Gouda theft, the Dutch media mentioned that the monstrance is worth much more than any thief can make by selling the raw materials. This statement claims that the thieves were possibly going to melt the monstrance and sell the gold and precious stones, it provides a motive for thieves.  Harvesting the raw materials of the monstrance would be easy to do for the thieves, and it is not hard or dangerous for them to cash in on, as opposed to trying to sell the object. The media may have instructed thieves on how to do an ‘easy’ crime and should perhaps have been more careful with the information they disclose and the possible consequences.

[1] A detailed description of the object and the ‘schatkamer’; the room in which the piece was exhibited, can be found on the website of the Museum Catharijne Convent.
[2] The review of the theft is made based on newspaper articles and the above cited description on the museum website as well as the footage of the security cameras.

[3] This theft is extensively described in http://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/30-03-2012/nog-geen-tips-over-gestolen-vaas-museum-gouda

April 3, 2013

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Florida Sheriff Reviving Search for Religious Paintings Stolen from Museum of the Cross in 1968

A Sarasota County sheriff's detective in Florida, Detective Kim McGrath, is reviving the search for 15 religious paintings by Saturday Evening Post illustrator Ben Stahl which were stolen from his Museum of the Cross on April 16, 1968.


Associated Press' Tamara Lush reported on the new search for the paintings stolen more than four de cades ago (Florida's Herald Tribune, "Stolen Religious Art an Enduring Mystery").
Commissioned to illustrate a Bible for the Catholic Press in the mid-1950s, Stahl painted the 14 Stations of the Cross. Later, he decided to paint larger versions, along with a 15th painting, "The Resurrection," because he wanted his work to end on a positive note. All 15 paintings were 6 feet by 9 feet, and painted in oil. In 1965, Stahl and his wife moved to Sarasota and decided to open a museum for the large-scale paintings. Called "The Museum of the Cross," it was one of the main tourist attractions in the area at the time.


One witness remembered seeing a white van near the museum that night, while Stahl recalled two visitors from South America who asked odd questions in the days prior to the theft. The trail eventually went cold, and Stahl and his family didn't think investigators were trying as hard as they could.
"It was devastating," said Regina Briskey, Ben Stahl's daughter, who was working at the museum at the time. "It was incomprehensible, because at that time in Sarasota, there was hardly any crime."
The artist's son, David Stahl, wrote on a website that he even contacted witnesses and possible informers around Florida, but claimed authorities didn't pay attention.
Keeping an old art theft case open:
McGath -- who is also investigating the cold case of a quadruple murder in 1959 in Sarasota and its possible link to the "In Cold Blood" killers in Kansas -- said she is poring over records. She wants to talk to anyone who might have information about the Stahl art heist. 
Interpol Washington is also involved. Spokeswoman Nicole Navas said this week that officials recently sent out a message to all 190 Interpol member countries in an attempt to renew interest in the case, which she said is one of 500 open art heist cases being investigated by the agency.

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