New Yorker Leonard A. Lauder Donates $1 Billion Cubist Art Collection to The Metropolitan Museum

Picasso's "Woman in an Armchair"
owned by Leonard Lauder
 is one of 78 works donated to the Met

Today The Met approved a gift of 78 Cubist works from philanthropist and cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder, according to The New York Times ("A Billion Dollar Gift Gives the Met a New Perspective").

Forty years ago, Leonard -- the older brother of Neue Galerie's founder Ronald S. Lauder -- began collecting paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Cubist artists. NYT article describes the donation to the Met: 

The trove of signature works, which includes 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Légers and 14 works by Gris, is valued at more than $1 billion. It puts Mr. Lauder, who for years has been one of the city’s most influential art patrons, in a class with cornerstone contributors to the museum like Michael C. Rockefeller, Walter Annenberg, Henry Osborne Havemeyer Robert Lehman.

In September 2007, a Montreal man, Georges Jorisch, claimed Leonard Lauder owned a Klimt painting, "Blossoming Meadows", Nazis had stolen in Vienna from his grandmother, Amalie Redlich. Lauder disputed the painting's history and within three months the lawsuit was dropped. [In November 2011, Jorisch sold a recovered Klimt painting, Litzlberg on the Attersee, at Sotheby's for $40 million.]

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Easter Theft at the Villa Giulia: Reports from online publications in Italian

Almost one week after thieves robbed the Villa Giulia in Rome and stolen jewelry, this is what information has been published online in Italian (indirectly quoted from translated material):

Il Giornale dell'Arte.com reported that at least ten gold necklaces with emeralds, pearls, and rubies from the 19th century Castellani Collection were stolen on Easter weekend when thieves smashed the display cases on the floor above the entrance to the museum. Police are investigating if there could have been inside help as the 112 alarm (Italy's version of 911) didn't go off immediately. 

The pieces may have been selected as a "theft by commission" or because it might be easier to remove the precious stones and resell these piece on the market as the Etruscan one's are well documented and these less so.

For now investigators are focusing on the the entry point downstairs, an assessment of the 50 or so staff associated with the museum's surveillance, and with reviewing tapes CCTV tapes both during the theft and in the days preceding the assault in the hopes that perhaps the assailants cased the museum in the days preceding the event passing themselves off as visitors.

Corriere della Sera reported that the Carabinieri are still waiting for a formal inventory of the stolen pieces and that other objects were damaged when the casing was smashed.

Given the execution of the event, law enforcement is placing a higher focus on the statements of the various staff responsible for the museums security watch to look for irregularities or contradictions of their recollection of the events as they occurred during the theft.

There is also speculation as to if the smoke was used to possible create a diversionary fire, create a smokescreen to hide the thieves movements or to perhaps signal their pick-up at the completion of the theft.

Law enforcement are also investigating other thefts of local residences in the area to look for similarities.

Libero Quotidiano reported that the Regional Association of Roman Goldsmiths, in cooperation with the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, has been working on a project that to document the complexity of the Castellani Collection in relation to historic archaeological finds in jewelry making and 19th century recreations and creativity. Part of the project involved preparations for a traveling exhibition that highlighted the School Castellani Goldsmiths in relation to previous Roman and Etruscan jewelry, with an emphasis on how these original styles were/are being utilized in contemporary jewelry. 

As first reported in La Repubblica on March 31, Easter Sunday:

The thieves arrived from the back of the museum. At 11.30 p.m. Saturday, March 30, thieves locked the guards in the gatehouse, went upstairs to the Hall of Gold, smashed three display cases, and stole jewelry collected by the Castellani family in the 19th century. The thieves used a smoke bomb to obscure images on the surveillance camera.

Neither the police nor the museum have identified which items were taken although one government official says that the items were not from the valuable archaeological collection of the National Etruscan Museum. The extent of the theft was limited by the appearance of the police who were alerted by the guards. Officials are reviewing footage from the CCTV cameras.

Daniele Particelli writing for Crimeblog.it on March 31:

Thieves launched tear gas to obscure the surveillance cameras as they entered the museum.

An alarm system was triggered when the first display case was smashed in the Hall of Gold; two guards had alerted the police whose arrival reduced the thieves time to grab objects.

Roma Daily News published on April 2:

Police investigators are reviewing hours of surveillance tape, looking for suspects who may have visited the Etruscan museum in the days leading up to the theft. The number of thieves is identified as three. The thieves used plastic ties to obstruct access to the gates surrounding the museum grounds.

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Easter Theft at Villa Giulia, Rome: Roundup of information published in English

Almost one week after the Easter theft of unidentified pieces from the Castellani jewellery collection at the Villa Giulia, what details have been published in English?

Gazzetta del Sud.online reported on April 2 the criticism the Italian government is facing over the museum theft in Rome:

A robbery over the Easter weekend at Rome's Villa Giulia Etruscan museum led to calls Tuesday for improved measures to secure Italy's culture ministry. "It took a multimillion (euro) theft to point attention to one of the longstanding problems that weigh on the management, protection and safety" of Italy's cultural sites, said Giuseppe Urbino, the national secretary of the Confsal Unsa Beni Culturali union.

Late Saturday, robbers stole dozens of rare items, including ancient jewelry. "Thefts have become routine, but never has any minister - at least in the last 20 years - tried to carry out a healthy safety policy". The union leader pointed the finger at spending cuts, following outgoing Premier Mario Monti's "spending review", which have left few resources for training, security upgrades and personnel, with many museum guards performing double shifts. "The management class at the culture ministry has demonstrated incompetence, and it is also for this reason that something must change in order to help culture in our 'bel paese' rise again," Urbino said.

Wanted in Rome.com reports:

The thieves gained entry after forcing open one of the entrance doors. They smashed two cabinets on the upper floor containing items from the important Castellani collection comprising more than 6,000 whole and fragmented artefacts including ancient and modern gold, and amber pendants dating from the early 7th century BC. 

However this activated the alarm system and before fleeing the thieves only stole some 19th-century jewelry, not among the museum's most valuable items.

Investigators believe that the thieves visited the museum before the robbery, possibly posing as tourists.

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Theft at Villa Giulia, Rome: Another European Museum Hit by Thieves

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, the 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 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 made 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 we do not know.  What is being reported is that the shattered display cases housed 19th century Castellani jewelry reproductions based on Etruscan design, while the collection cases facing and alongside those hit contain original Etruscan pieces. 

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 each.

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-applyied minute gold grain onto high-karat gold surfaces producing labor intensive and intricate jewelry pieces 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, Fortunato Castellani, opened his family’s jewelry business on Via del Corso in Rome in 1814 building it into a goldsmith dynasty. Alongside its founder, three generations of the 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. 

Characterized by its thoughtfully worked gold, many Castellani revival pieces utilize 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 cannot be sold, remains to be seen.

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Florida Sheriff Reviving Search for Religious Paintings Stolen from Museum of the Cross in 1968

A Sarasota County sheriff's detective in Florida, Detective Kim McGrath, is reviving the search for 15 religious paintings by Saturday Evening Post illustrator Ben Stahl which were stolen from his Museum of the Cross on April 16, 1968.


Associated Press' Tamara Lush reported on the new search for the paintings stolen more than four de cades ago (Florida's Herald Tribune, "Stolen Religious Art an Enduring Mystery").

Commissioned to illustrate a Bible for the Catholic Press in the mid-1950s, Stahl painted the 14 Stations of the Cross. Later, he decided to paint larger versions, along with a 15th painting, "The Resurrection," because he wanted his work to end on a positive note. All 15 paintings were 6 feet by 9 feet, and painted in oil. In 1965, Stahl and his wife moved to Sarasota and decided to open a museum for the large-scale paintings. Called "The Museum of the Cross," it was one of the main tourist attractions in the area at the time.

One witness remembered seeing a white van near the museum that night, while Stahl recalled two visitors from South America who asked odd questions in the days prior to the theft. The trail eventually went cold, and Stahl and his family didn't think investigators were trying as hard as they could.

"It was devastating," said Regina Briskey, Ben Stahl's daughter, who was working at the museum at the time. "It was incomprehensible, because at that time in Sarasota, there was hardly any crime."

The artist's son, David Stahl, wrote on a website that he even contacted witnesses and possible informers around Florida, but claimed authorities didn't pay attention.

Keeping an old art theft case open:

McGath -- who is also investigating the cold case of a quadruple murder in 1959 in Sarasota and its possible link to the "In Cold Blood" killers in Kansas -- said she is poring over records. She wants to talk to anyone who might have information about the Stahl art heist. 

Interpol Washington is also involved. Spokeswoman Nicole Navas said this week that officials recently sent out a message to all 190 Interpol member countries in an attempt to renew interest in the case, which she said is one of 500 open art heist cases being investigated by the agency.

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Theft at the Villa Giulia, Rome: Background on the The Jewellery in the Augusto Castellani Collection

The Castellani Collection is located on the site
plan in the dark green (one half circle and
 another rectangle) above the entrance.

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

The Short Guide to The Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum (second reprint 2008) includes a description of the jewellery in the Augusto Castellani Collection.

The article dated March 31 in La Repubblica reporting the theft at the Villa Giulia last Saturday night did not identify the items stolen.

The Collection Castellani is described as being in Room 19 (half circle) and Room 20 (smaller rectangle) on the upper floor above the entrance to the Villa Giulia. The Short Guide places the jewellery in Room 20.

The Castellani jewellery collection at the Villa Giulia includes 'ancient articles in gold along with the "modern" pieces produced over the years by the Castellani goldsmiths."

The collection was assembled in the latter half of the 19th century - a time when intensive and indeed fruitful excavations were being carried out on the great sites of Etruria and Latium - thanks to the enthusiastic initiative of the family progenitor, Fortunato Pio. This friend and disciple of Michelangelo Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, began to collect antiquities "to replace in our city of Rome what the Pope sold to France in 1860".

The archaeological gold objects include a 'splendid pectoral in gold and amber' and 'three finely-wrought figured pendants in amber' from the early 7th century BC Galeassi tomb discovered in Palestrina in 1861. A necklace with miniature amphora pendants (Castellani reconstruction from two necklaces of similar typology, style and chronology) is from Tarquinia in the 4th century BC.

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Theft at the Villa Giulia, Rome: Thieves distracted guards with smoke bombs to gain access to Etruscan Museum to steal 19th century jewelry

Castellani brooch (Talking Jewelry)

ARCA Lecturer Derek Fincham has written of Saturday's robbery of the Villa Giulia in Rome on his blog Illicit Cultural Property:

La Reppubblica reports today that the thieves broke into the museum on Saturday night through the back, locked the guards on duty in the gatehouse, and stole some jewelry from the 19th century Castellani collection.

The thieves reportedly used smoke bombs to distract the guards and to obscure the view of the security cameras. But they appear to have taken little. Most of the antiquities were unscathed, at least according to initial reports.

Earlier this month, blogger and jeweler Margriet Sopers (Talking Jewelry) described the permanent Castellani jewelry collection at the Villa Giulia as "archaeologically inspired" pieces of "colorful micro-mosaics and enamellings".

La Reppubblica reports (according to the Google Translation) that thieves used an ax to smash the display case of jewelry in the Hall of Gold (bilingual subscribers feel free to correct this translation).

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