by Lynda Albertson, CEO, Association of Research into Crimes against Art
ROME - In the last thirteen months several museums in Europe have
been hit with dramatic thefts.
In February 2012, two men stormed the Archeological Museum
of Olympia in the early morning and tied up a female guard. Wielding hammers, the robbers proceeded
to smash five reinforced glass display cases, stuffing 68 pottery and bronze artifacts
into their bags before making a hasty escape.
In a less violent robbery, thieves walked into the Kunsthal
in Rotterdam at 3 am on October 16, 2012 and stole seven paintings from the
Triton Foundation, a private foundation of the family of the late Willem
Cordia. Inside the museum for less
than two minutes, the thieves cherry-picked valuable art works by Picasso,
Monet, Gauguin, Matisse and Lucian Freud, packing them into rucksacks before
exiting the same way they came in.
In January goal-oriented burglars struck an art museum in
Bergen, Norway for the second time in less than three years. Using high-beam headlights and
crowbars, two thieves smashed display cases and stole 23 rare Chinese
artifacts in just over ninety seconds.
This past weekend, over the Easter holidays, Rome’s Villa
Giulia joined the list.
Arriving around midnight, the thieves announced their
presence by dramatically launching a smoke grenade. This effectively occupied
the attention of the night watchmen and bought the thieves the precious seconds
needed to climb a garden wall and break into the museum. It also provided them with a thick cover to
obscure their movements on the museum’s close-circuit cameras.
While the guards investigated the smoke and notified the
police of the evening's irregularity, the criminals began making their way through the
museum. Bypassing many of Villa
Giulia’s costlier masterpieces, the robbers climbed the stairs to the first
floor rooms that house the objects that make up the vast 6000-piece Castellani
collection.
Stopping in Room 20, the
Sala
degli Ori, the thieves smashed two of the four double
collection display cabinets, setting off the museum’s alarm and grabbing an as
yet, unnamed number of jewelry pieces before making their escape unseen.
If their selection was random or
purposeful has not been indicated by the Italian investigators. What has been said is that the shattered display cases housed 19th century
Castellani jewelry reproductions based on Etruscan designs while the collection
cases facing and alongside those hit containing original Etruscan pieces were left untouched.
Anyone familiar with ancient jewelry making techniques knows
that the loss of these antique reproductions is likely to be quite significant. In December of 2006 Sotheby's sold a Castellani Egyptian-revival gold, scarab and micromosaic necklace with matching brooch to a private collector for $475,200. Nine other Castellani pieces sold in that same sale for six figures a piece.
To create his Etruscan replicas, Alessandro Castellani
studied original Etruscan artifacts in great detail to try to unravel their
method of fabrication. Experimenting with various granulation techniques, he
hand-applied minute gold grain onto high-karat gold surfaces producing labor
intensive and intricate gold baubles that were as exquisite as their ancient
counterparts.
The finest examples of jewelry in this style were produced
between the eighth and second centuries, B.C.E. Even with modern tools and
knowledge, few goldsmiths today have sufficient skill to compete with either
the Castellani jewelers or the original Etruscan masters of the craft. The jewelry pieces in the Villa Giulia
collection were created in a time when human hands were more abundant that the
precious metals needed to produce an item and many of the collection’s
signature pieces required hundreds of hours of painstaking workmanship.
As back history to the stolen pieces, Fortunato Castellani, opened his family’s jewelry
business on the Via del Corso in Rome in 1814 growing the family enterprise into a goldsmith dynasty.
Alongside its founder, three generations of Castellani family members and jewelry
artisans based their reputations on creating what they called “Italian
archaeological jewelry,” inspired by the precious Etruscan, Roman, Greek, and
Byzantine antiquities being excavated at the time.
Characterised by its thoughtfully worked gold, many
Castellani revival pieces utilise labor-intensive micro mosaic insets, or were
ornately paved with cameos or semi-precious stones. The costliest pieces were purchased by well-heeled clientele,
some of whom included Napoleon III; Prince Albert; Queen Victoria's
daughter, Empress Frederick of Prussia; Queen Maria Pia of Savoy; and Robert and
Elizabeth Browning, who even wrote a poem about one of their rings.
For now, the authorities at the Villa Giulia and the
Carabinieri TPC are remaining mum publicly as to which 19th century pieces
were taken, their value and what, if anything, the museum’s closed circuit
surveillance tapes have revealed in terms of clues.
What we do know is that this not the first time that a
burglar has made use of a cinema-worthy smokescreen to foil security cameras or
to carry out a brazen museum theft on a holiday.
In 1999 Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise was stolen from
the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England during New Year celebrations. The bandit broke through a skylight,
rappelled down a rope ladder into a gallery and blinded security cameras with a
smoke bomb before making off with the £3m painting.
A smoke bomb was also detonated inside the Ukraine's Lvov
Picture Gallery in 1992 during a noon-day heist. In this violent robbery, two bandits stole three 19th
century paintings and shot two museum employees - one a manager and the other a
section manager - who tried to prevent their escape.
What will become of the pieces stolen from the Villa Giulia collection
is subject to speculation, as is the rationale behind most modern museum
thefts. Some here in Rome think
that the recent UK and European robberies highlight that austerity measures and
the recession have created a financial climate that on surface value makes
museum collections appealing targets.
What happens after, when the high profile goods are difficult to sell, remains to be seen.
museum theft,Villa Giulia
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museum theft,Villa Giulia
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