In seven minutes, thieves entered the Louvre in Paris and made off with eight “priceless” jewels.
The necklaces, earrings, brooches, and crowns have belonged to an array of 19th-century royals, including Napoleon’s wife, Marie-Amélie, and Empress Eugénie, married to Napoleon III.
It happened on a Sunday, around 9:30 a.m. local time, shortly after the museum opened.
Four thieves used a vehicle-mounted mechanical lift to access the Gallery of Apollo via a balcony. They cut through the glass panes, got in, threatened guards, stole the items from two glass display cases, tried to set fire to the truck, and dropped a crown in their escape.
The gang was organised, professional, and had clearly scoped the world’s most visited gallery and knew exactly what they were after.
But, after you’ve jumped the hurdles of security, what do you do with this highly recognisable royal regalia?
Art historian, author, and curator Dr Penelope Jackson told The Front Page that she was instantly shocked by the brazenness.
“The audacity of how they went about it in broad daylight, just half an hour after the Louvre opened.
“It’s obviously very sad for the French nation. This is part of their history, their cultural history. That’s really sad because it’s highly likely they won’t come back, or in the form that they were stolen in.
“Every day in the Louvre, there’s a cap of about 30,000 visitors. That’s a lot of people who go there every day. If you’re a tourist there and this is your once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Louvre and you were in that vicinity, how very scary that is,” she said.
Experts have said that the stolen treasures may never be recovered.
“It’s not like a painting where you can’t change its physical properties very easily... One of those [stolen] was a tiara or crown that had literally thousands of gems in it, diamonds, emeralds, you name it. And they were big too.
“So, they could all be split up separately and divided. They could melt down the metals as well, and that’s a pretty quick process.
“The problem is, unless they go to someone who really knows what they’re doing, those stones could actually be damaged in the process of removal or breaking down.
“The other thing, of course, is they’ve got no provenance either. In other words, the history of ownership. They can’t legitimately sell them because someone’s going to say, Where did this great big diamond come from?” she said.
Jackson said she’s sure the heist will make the Louvre, and other galleries and museums around the world, take a hard look at their current security measures.
“The other thing about security guards is that they have a huge responsibility to protect objects around the world in museums and galleries. And yet, you will find that most of them will be on minimum wage.
“So often, if there are budget cuts, they get rid of security staff. Just last week, the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced cuts and among those cuts were security staff,” she said.
Jackson has been researching art crime in New Zealand and Australia for years. She said one of the most public heists in our history would be the 1998 theft of a James Tissot painting from the Auckland Art Gallery.
The painting ‘Still on Top’ was stolen at gunpoint.
“It was actually recovered, but it had been really badly damaged, and it took the conservator, Sarah Hillary, two years to piece back together.
“Then another is more recent, on April Fool’s Day in 2017. Two Lindauer portraits were taken from the International Art Centre in Parnell.
“It took five years for those works to come back and be recovered,” she said.
However, not every stolen painting or gem is found.
“You only have to get one person who spills the beans. It’s difficult. In terms of recovery, they reckon, and this is a really hard thing to measure, that only about 10% of artworks or objects are ever recovered internationally,” Jackson said.
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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