'Artnapping'
November 17 2015
Picture: Artnet News
Artnet News reports that a 'retired art thief' is demanding a EUR150,000 ransom for the return of a painting by Klimt (above) stolen from a museum in Piacenza in 1997. That's some way to cash in your pension.
Regular readers will know I take a dim view of the paying of ransoms for stolen art. It only encourages more theft, and indeed 'artnapping' has now become an industry in itself. But a group of Piacenza art institutions has apparently agreed to pay the money. And, says ArtNet:
"Artnapping"—the stealing of art for ransom—has gained popularity in the criminal world. This past March, the Vatican announced that it received a ransom request of €100,000 for the return of two stolen documents by the Renaissance master Michelangelo 20 years after the documents had disappeared.
In April, the van Buuren Museum in Belgium negotiated a ransom with thieves for the return of a group of ten stolen paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, James Ensor, and others.
“It happens more and more," Belgian art expert Jacques Lust told TV Brussels at the time. “Not all details make it to the media, of course. If a case is solved there's no mention of the amounts paid, nor of the works having been stolen. But there's an increase in such cases," he said.
