FBI Top Ten Art Crimes, FBI Art Crimes Team – Updated

Here is an update on the FBI Top Ten Art Crimes list investigations, and we’ve added a few new art heists to keep the list current.

In November 2005, the FBI announced the creation of a Top Ten Art Crimes list to help bring attention to stolen masterworks and elicit the public’s help in recovering them, and to bring the thieves to justice.

1. Iraqi Looted and Stolen Artifacts – Many still missing.
1a. Statue of Entemena – Recovered & Repatriated.
2. Caravaggio’s Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco – Still missing.
3. Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius – Still missing.
4. Art Theft At Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum In Boston – Still missing.
– Replaced Van Gogh Museum Robbery when both paintings were recovered.
5. Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise – Still missing.
6. Art Gallery of New South Wales – Van Mieris, A Cavalier – Still missing.
7. Museu Chacara Do Céu, Rio De Janeiro – Art by Picasso, Dali, Monet, Matisse – Still missing.
9. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Murals – Still missing.
10. Renoir Oil Painting – Still missing.

Iraqi Looted and Stolen Artifacts

Between March and April 2003, Iraqi cultural institutions and archaeological sites, including the Iraq National Museum, suffered major losses of priceless historical artifacts. Looting from archaeological sites continued on a massive scale for many years after US occupation of Iraq.

A number of artifacts stolen from the Iraq National Museum have been returned, but between 7,000-10,000 remain missing. Among the missing are almost 5,000 cylinder seals. In February 2005, the FBI recovered and repatriated eight cylinder seals taken from archaeological sites in Iraq.

Statue of Entemena

The statue of Sumerian King Entemena of Lagash, the 4th king in the dynasty of Lagash (modern al-Hiba, Iraq), is about three feet high and was sculpted out of rare black diorite stone around 2,340 BC. The 300 pound sculpture was excavated near the temple of Ur in southern Iraq in the 1920’s.

Along with other priceless artifacts, the statue of Entemena disappeared from the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad during the chaos of early April 2003 when U.S. troops entered the city but did not have sufficient numbers nor specific orders to protect the museum.

In late 2005, confidential informants overseas notified Department of Homeland Security of the whereabouts of the statue. Around May 2006, the statue was recovered and shipped to the United States. The statue was authenticated around June 5, and given back to the Government of Iraq at a ceremony in Washington, DC. in July 2006, and it returned to Iraq in 2010.

(left) Statue of Entemena with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki at the repatriation ceremony in the Embassy of Iraq, Washington, DC, 25 July 2006
(right) Statue of Entemena, king of Lagash, southern Iraq, ca. 2400 BC. (Courtesy of John Russell) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

On Tuesday, July 25, 2006, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Iraqi Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki participated in a ceremony marking the repatriation of the diorite statue of Entemena to the Iraqi Government, at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq.

The statue of King Entemena of Lagash is one of the most significant pieces looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003, and is one of INTERPOL‘s most significant recoveries.

The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia
Milbry Polk, Angela M.H. Schuster, Harry N. Abrams, 2005 

Caravaggio’s Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco

In October 1969, two thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy and removed the Caravaggio Nativity from its frame. Experts estimated its value at $20 million.

Caravaggio’s Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco

The painting is about 2.7 metres high and 2 metres wide. On the night of October 17–18, 1969, two thieves cut the painting from its frame and also took a carpet which authorities believe was used to roll up the painting.

In 2005, Italian authorities believed the painting was in Sicily, hidden somewhere between Palermo and Bagheria. Rumours persist that the painting was kept in a barn and badly damaged by rats, fed to pigs, and/or kept as a floor rug by a mafia boss. Investigators generally agree that the Sicilian Mafia has largely been responsible for its subsequent movements. Caravaggio’s Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco is still missing.

Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius theft

In October 1995, it was reported that a $3 million Stradivarius violin had been stolen from the New York City apartment of Erica Morini, a noted concert violinist. Morini’s father bought the Stradivarius for $10,000 in Paris in 1924, when she was 21, and Erica performed with it for her entire career.

Austrian-born violinist Erika Morini, praised by the New York Times as “probably the greatest woman violinist who ever lived”, died a few days later holding a copy of her precious Stradivarius on 1 November, 1995 – aged 91. Morini was not told about the robbery before she passed away in hospital. 

Police believe the thief had the keys to Ms Morini’s apartment and lock-safe cabinet. A number of precious paintings, letters, notes and musical scores were also stolen, leading investigators to believe the heist was done ‘to order’ or by someone knowledgable in music.

Made in 1727 by Antonio Stradivari, the violin is known as the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius. The violin has had three owners: the first owner gave the violin the name ‘General Davidoff’ in honour of Russian cellist Karl Davydov (the ‘Davidov Stradivarius’ is a famous cello). The next owner of the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius was the workshop of Silvestre & Maucotel in Paris where Erica Morini’s father purchased the Stradivarius.

There are about 650 Stradivarius instruments in existence today, including 450 to 512 violins, and they continue to attract record prices, for example the 1721 violin named “Lady Blunt” was auctioned in 2011 for over $15 million, which was more than four times the previous auction record for a Stradivari violin.

Other famous Stradivarius that have been stolen and recovered include the ‘Huberman Strad’, missing for 51 years and then recovered in 1985; the ‘Totenburg Stadivarius’ recovered in 1985, 35 years after it was stolen (or accidentally left on a car’s roof while the student drove off); and a violin dubbed the ‘Duke of Alcantara’, which disappeared in 1967 and was missing for 27 years before it was found.

A reward of $100,000 has been offered for the return of the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius which has been most recently valued at over $15 million.

Van Gogh Museum Robbery

On 7 December 2002, two thieves climbed a ladder to the roof and broke into the Vincent Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The thieves stole two paintings: Van Gogh’s View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, valued at $30 million.

Dutch police convicted two men in December 2003 but the paintings were missing for over 13 years, until they were recovered in January 2016 by the Italian Guardia di Finanza at Castellammare di Stabia near Naples.

Van Gogh’s ‘Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather’ (also called ‘View of the Sea at Scheveningen‘) and his later painting ‘Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen‘ were discovered under the kitchen floor of a villa associated with Camorra gang boss Raffaele Imperiale without their original frames.

The recovery of the two Van Gogh paintings was announced in September 2016. They were subsequently returned to the Van Gogh Museum and after some restoration went back on display in March 2017.

When the two Van Gogh paintings were recovered, the FBI removed them from the Top Ten and replaced them with the Art Theft At Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum In Boston, which remains one of the world’s great unsolved mysteries.

Art heist – Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise

On December 31, 1999, during the noisy and distracting celebration fireworks of the new millennium, a thief broke through a skylight into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, and stole Cezanne’s landscape oil-on-canvas painting View of Auvers-sur-Oise.

View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Paul Cézanne

The View of Auvers-sur-Oise was the only painting taken from a room that also displayed artworks by Renoir, Rodin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Superintendent John Carr of Oxford Police said: “Whoever has taken this painting has given some thought to how to steal it. The person has some reason for it and some outlet for it.”

Valued at £3 million, the painting has been described as an important work illustrating the transition from early to mature Cezanne painting. The painting was purchased by the Ashmolean, the oldest public museum in the world, in 1980. View of Auvers-sur-Oise was cut from its frame during the burglary and measures 18″ by 22″ inches. It is still missing.

Theft from Art Gallery of New South Wales

On Sunday, 10 June, 2007, A Cavalier, a self portrait in oil on wood panel by Dutch Master Frans Van Mieris, was stolen from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia while the gallery was open for public viewing, sometime between 10am and 12.30pm.

Frans van Mieris I, Leiden, Netherlands, 1635-81 A cavalier (self portrait) 1657/59, oil on oak panel, 20 x 16 x 1cm. Collection Art Gallery of New South Wales

Specialist tools were required to remove the painting from the wall, although some investigators think it was an opportunistic crime. A Cavalier was screwed to the wall with two visible keyhole plates and was situated in a room with no camera surveillance and a guard only intermittently present.

The portrait is relatively small, approximately A3 in size, including the lacquered timber frame (30.7 x 26.7cm) – without the frame it measures 20 x 16 cm. In 2012, NSW police said that their investigation into the art theft was suspended. The painting was insured for $1.4 million and is still missing.

Museu Chacara Do Céu, Rio De Janeiro

On February 24, 2006, on the first day of Carnival, the city of Rio de Janeiro was partying. At about 4pm, four paintings and other objects were stolen from the Museu Chacara do Céu, Rio de Janeiro, by four armed men.

The four thieves, which included a teenager, brandished a hand grenade and overpowered the security guards. They shut down the security cameras, and kept visitors and staff hostage for about thirty minutes while they stole the paintings and a book Toros, illustrated by Pablo Picasso.  

The four paintings were: Marine by Claude Monet; The Two Balcony by Salvador Dalí; The Luxemburg Gardens by Henri Matisse, and The Dance by Pablo Picasso.

The artworks were not alarmed and were only secured by nylon threads. At the time, the stolen artworks, the museum’s most valuable pieces, were worth up to $50m (£28.7m)

Sometime later, the passe-partout mounting which protected the paintings was found on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The passe-partout was burnt and investigators believed that the paintings would also have been burnt. The idea that the burnt remains of the mounting was a decoy was dismissed and the search for the stolen masterpieces was abandoned. The four artworks still remain missing.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Murals by Maxfield Parrish

In July 2002, two oil paintings by Maxfield Parrish were stolen during a burglary of the Edenhurst Gallery in West Hollywood, California.

The paintings are two panels from a series of six large-scale murals and three additional transom paintings commissioned for Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s 5th Avenue mansion in New York.

The paintings, measuring around five feet by six feet, were cut from their frames during the theft. The value of the two paintings was estimated at $4 million. They are still missing.

Stolen Renoir Oil Painting

On September 8, 2011, Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair by Pierre Auguste Renoir was stolen during an armed robbery in a Houston home. The Renoir was then added to the FBI Top Ten Art Crimes List.

The masked robber is described as a white male, 18 to 26 years old, who weighs about 160 pounds and is approximately 5’10” tall. He was armed with a large-caliber, semi-automatic handgun.

Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair

Renoir, a master Impressionist, painted Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair in 1918.

The homeowner was watching television when she heard a loud noise downstairs. When she went to investigate, she was confronted by an armed man in a ski mask. The thief had forced entry through the back door of the home.

The painting was taken with its frame intact from the stairwell where it hung. The canvas size is 50.17 x 41.28 centimeters, and the artist signed the oil portrait in the lower right corner.

A private insurer is offering up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of the painting, which is still missing.

FBI Top Ten Art Crimes List

The FBI established the Top Ten Art Crimes list in 2005. Art theft costs between $4 and 6 billion worldwide every year with much of that stolen art ending up in the United States due to the large market for art and cultural property.

The rapid-deployment Art Crime Team was established in 2004, partly as a result of the problem with the Baghdad Museum and the looting of the Baghdad Museum. The FBI Art Crime Team has 13 special agents and a program manager.

Since the Art Crime team’s inception, they’ve recovered over 850 items valued at over $134 million, including a Rembrandt self-portrait and another Renoir work titled Young Parisian stolen from Sweden’s National Museum. The current list may be found on the FBI art theft program page.

Information about the painting has been included in the FBI’s National Stolen Art File, as well as other similar online tools—including the Art Loss Register and INTERPOL’s Works of Art database—that alert art dealers, gallery owners, and auction houses about missing and stolen artwork.

The National Stolen Art File is a database of entries on objects that have been stolen—usually within the United States—that are valued at over $2,000.

The FBI needs your help: Anyone with information about the stolen Renoir is encouraged to contact their local FBI office or the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate, or to submit a tip online at https://tips.fbi.gov

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