After sunset on May 31, 1983, and before dawn the next morning, a window at the Louvre was broken into and two pieces of Italian armor from the 16th century were stolen in one of the most mysterious branches in the history of the museum.
Nearly 40 years later, the two items – a ceremonial helmet and a chest bag – were identified in the private collection of a family in Bordeaux, in the west of France. Police are investigating how the items ended up in the family’s estate and who was responsible for the theft.
“The Louvre is delighted that these two pieces of Renaissance armor have been found thanks to the investigators’ work,” the museum said in a statement. It added that what happened on the evening of May 31, 1983, remained a ‘mystery’, with few details known to the general public.
The museum did not respond to requests for further information about the circumstances surrounding the theft, the identity of the family that had the armor or what led the family to have their private art collection assessed.
According to local news reports, the items appeared in Bordeaux in January. The French newspaper Le Figaro has appealed to an auctioneer for an expert on antiquities who identified the articles as the two that were stolen from the Louvre in 1983.
The two items, believed to have been made in Milan in the second half of the 16th century, will be on display as soon as the museum reopens, according to the Louvre. They were bequeathed in 1922 by the Rothschild family to the Louvre, one of the most visited museums in the world.
The museum said in a statement that the 1983 theft “severely bothered all staff at the time.”
There were several conspicuous branches in the Louvre. Probably the most famous took place during the summer of 1911 when a museum employee stole the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. The employee, Vincenzo Peruggia, was arrested two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence, Italy, and the painting was returned to the museum.
“I just had to choose a suitable moment and a mere twist would put the picture in my hands,” he said in court in 1913. He describes how he snatches it off the wall and slides it under his blouse. “It was done in a matter of seconds.” His motivation was to return the painting to his native Italy, he said.
Another sensational theft occurred in 1976 when three burglars broke into the Louvre at the Louvre and stole a 19th-century diamond-laden sword from King Charles X of France from a shop window. The thieves climbed a metal scaffold and broke windows on the second floor and broke into the museum. And in 1990, a painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir, “Portrait of a Seated Woman”, was cut out of its frame and stolen from a gallery on the third floor.
Erin Thompson, associate professor of fertilizer crime, said it is not uncommon for museum curators to remain silent about thefts. “Museum curators thought that if they confessed to a theft, they would expose a security flaw or inspire other people to take action,” said Dr. Thompson said. But researchers have said for the past few decades, ‘Look, guys, you’re not going to get anything back if people do not know it’s missing. ‘So museums rather reluctantly publish thefts, which has led to much more recovery of things. ”
One risk of publishing thefts is that if thieves learn that the authorities are responsible, it is more likely that stolen works will be destroyed, deconstructed or smelted to detect them, said dr. Thompson said. A small percentage of stolen art is found, although studies show that about 40 percent of art stolen in exhibitions in museums is returned, as the works tend to be more recognizable and their theft is immediately noticed. When art is stolen from the store, it can take museum officials years to notice that items are missing.