Slumming Through The Arts-Take Your Pick-With The 350^th Anniversary Of Rembrandt’s Birth-The Infamous Elizabeth Stewart Gardner Heist And The Theft Of Cellini’s “Venus” In Mind

By Sam Lowell

As long as I have been in the journalism racket, and like all professions to its denizens it is a racket or some other unsavvy designation to denote that you belong to the “club” as weary and wary as you are, I will never get over how one assignment begets another. Begets right here is exactly the right word since the genesis of this piece will be a short recent piece I did to give a nod to the 350^th anniversary of the birth one Rembrandt, last name van Rijn or something like that although nobody bothers with last names for guys like him just like with Elvis or Morgana. Moreover, that nod to the great painter was driven by the not so strange circumstance, to me anyway, that fellow writer here and budding amateur art critic Laura Perkins refused the assignment.

Refused, no, better held her nose up to say a few kind, hell, even unkind words, about a guy who knew how stir those dark-hued paints even if he couldn’t make his sitters less ugly as a rule. Refused, get this coming from a Tonio’s corner boy who had to learn the value of arts and culture the very hardest way,  based on some “principle” that these Dutch painters  (and Flemish, you know people from the Netherlands, Belgium, some who were held in thrall by various Spanish dukes and magicians, the low countries I think they call them collectively) were stuff shirts filled with dark palettes and darker motives who glad rag painted the rising bourgeoisie, the prosperous merchant and burghers who ran the big towns for filthy lucre. Laura showing deep roots as a child of the 1960s genteel. Worse, worst of all, and here I reluctantly have to agree with her, these “photoshop” artists, her term, not only painted those badass burghers swilling booze or doing penance, their ugly, warts and all wives and children, their earthly possession and their larders but some of the ugliest and frightening paintings of fish and fowl she had ever seen.

Since I have in the past done some articles on the arts, and in the interest of transparency have been something of an advisor to Ms. Perkins as she has delved through the art world our editor picked me to do the Rembrandt chore. Which was fair enough and no bitterness since as I pointed out in that prior article my take on the Dutch and Flemish masters is that after the holy goof stuff put out by guys who should have known better like Fra Angelina and Kid De Leo, from the Middles Ages totally dedicated to the hot off the shelves cult of the Virgin Mary, Christ’s birth and endless baby pictures, his late in life crucifixion, sex life (including the long rumored affair with the street whore Mary Magdalene which paved her way to quick sainthood and plenty of lurid painted pornography showing plenty of skin from her so-called past, every freaking martyred saint and sinner they could patronize including some bum named Sebastian who took plenty of arrows for his Lord and later when some of the citizenry had money rich bastards they were a breath of fresh air (minus the foul fowl and fish, and I might add maybe a few of those over-the-top fruit bowls and fake flower bouquets). So, I was all in. Did my little tribute to master artist Rembrandt and then done. Not a bad piece.

Well not quite done since during that piece I mentioned that I still longed for the day when those stolen Rembrandts (and other paintings and sketches, thirteen in all) from the infamous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston come back home and fill in those now long-standing empty spaces that startle even the most sophisticated patron when you go to the piazza. After I had already submitted that little piece with that sullen attachment I got to thinking how easy that heist had been, a couple of rummies posing as public coppers show up late one night, tie up some rent-a-cop making minimum wage and then start working the rooms and how baffling the selection process since there were plenty of other items that I would have taken for my “wish list.”

Sorry but the Rembrandts, even the big seascape and certainly not some cheapjack sketch of the artist as a young man would not have been in the top twenty although Botticelli, Reubens, Holbein the Younger too, would have been, no question. It seems obvious that if the whole prank was not an inside job, that the rent-a-cop had not gotten his, then the thieves were working off a list for some art specialist, maybe somebody like Rudy Deval out of the New Wave Gallery in New York City who fell down soon after the heist but was known to have deep pockets and a tight ass secure room in his house to fondle the items in complete privacy. Rudy was let off the hook though when he was found face down in a few feet of water in the Hudson around Ardsley having about three dollars to his name that he could call his own. That made me think of Wall Street guys, not the cold call bother you stockbrokers but what today are called hedge fund managers, guys who would have the dough to pay out for the job and have no concern about the public losing some very valuable art objects to look at and could be closed mouth enough about their new toys to keep them for as long as necessary. This is all speculation on my part  although plenty of people have made a livelihood and some prizes out of less than I have spun in any case which is basically what is left of the scandalous Isabella story, that and those still haunting empty frames.

Moving on. The Gardner theft, although far and away the biggest art heist of them all except maybe when Francois Villon and his toughs looted half of France’s art collection got me thinking about another infamous, if not as well known, art theft in Paris back in the 1960s at the old Lafayette Museum when a thief, or thieves, grabbed the old sculptor Cellini’s “Venus” without any heavy lifting. (Let’s be clear here for those with short memories or who are too young to remember the outcry after that caper this is not that cheapjack “saltcellar” which I say good riddance to piece grabbed by thieves in Vienna, that was in 2003). Probably now you could not even come close to grabbing this good stuff, even a dinky thing like “saltcellar” from free-for-all Vienna which in the old days you could have taken and put in your back pocket and walked away without a minimum wage guard bothering you on your journey. Not today with all the modern technology in museums to guard against craziness and keep insurance premiums down although maybe some young scalawag would attempt such a daring deed just to see if it was doable. Test the waters. Maybe see that Gardner caper as a sideshow.                      

                  

But back to the Cellini theft. That was a piece of work (and not a bad piece of sculpture although that broken nose detracted from those nice long lines of her torso, a textbook example of how to grab art without getting a few slugs to the head for your troubles. Naturally it was an inside job it is almost impossible to see these big jobs carried out with a little inside info at least. The beauty of this one was that the mastermind thief, Harry, but don’t get hung up on names because they all used aliases, actually had been hired as an art theft specialist employed by the museum’s curator to make security tight when the Venus was to be put on public display after the director had persuaded a private party to lend it for the show. There would be some outside help as usual and necessary for such endeavors if for no other reason than a smooth getaway but let me map this one out.

Harry and his accomplice, Maisy, a bright young thing he was trying to get under the silky sheets with and whom he was also trying to impress with his prowess as a master thief since she was not the type to have been impressed by art coppers pulled this one off one rainy night. One of Harry’s brightest moves was to bring Maisy in, to get her deep inside the conspiracy and the really clever part was that her final job on the caper for which she was eminently qualified would be to act as one of the scrubwomen who keep museums and other places clean for the clientele. Nice move, very nice. One fine day, well rainy day that is important, the pair just wait for the museum to close and then hide in the men’s bathroom after the minimum wage guards do their perfunctory check of the stalls. No sweat.

After an inside check of the guard routines around the building Harry and Maisy go to work first opening up the room where all the security, state of the art for the day such as it was, all bells and whistles nothing else, alarms were located. With a wire-cutter and baling wire Harry disarmed the alarms in about thirty seconds. Next and critical to the plan Harry had to disarm the sensor ray fields that were protecting the statue itself. Here is the magic part. Harry had been the guy who wrote the code, had set the whole light show operation around the statue up himself so he just disarmed that unit in another thirty seconds, maybe. Needless to say Harry snatched the Venus and put it in a lunch bucket in the guards’ rec room. Not just any lunch bucket but Maisy’s now on her knees scrubbing floors like a pro. When the guards came around and find the damn thing missing from its pedestal they went crazy as Maisy in the confusion headed back to the guards’ room and a waiting Harry who has figured out a way through the basement. Nice work, right.                   

Harry, retired to some unknown island in the Pacific, minus Maisy when he decided one share was better than tow shares and dumped her body in a garbage bin outside the museum wound up writing about it for the general public to learn who the great art thief of the period was. Here’s the real beauty of the scam as the story unfolded. That displayed Venus that Harry had spent so much time setting up with high-end security was bogus, was the work of that so-called private collector who loaned the piece to the museum, a master art forger. Slick Harry obviously knew this. Get this he had some American financier (who else in the post-World War II “American Century” days) lined up to buy the fake, no questions asked on his authority as an art specialist once he knew it was on the market.  He had another big pay day when some hedge fund private collector doubled his pay-off and through that same party Harry was able to sell the real deal to one of those hedge fund managers with closed mouths and plenty of cash for two million, not much now for art but not inconsiderable back then. Four million, not bad. Beat that.