(Illustrated by Wang Chia-Chen)

The Mona Lisa, a gold toilet and now the Louvre’s royal jewels: a fascinating history of art heists

刊出日期 2025.11.12

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In a cleverly conceived operation, four men wearing fluorescent vests pulled up at the Louvre in a flat-decked truck at 9.30 Sunday morning. Quickly setting to work, they raised an extendable ladder to the second storey. Climbing it, they cut through a window, entered the Galerie d’Apollon and, brandishing power tools, helped themselves to nine exquisite objects.
The objects taken were France’s royal jewels, formerly belonging to the Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife and arts patron.
This is where it gets tricky for the thieves: what can you do with these priceless objects? They can’t wear them – too big and glitzy to go unnoticed – and they can’t sell them legitimately, as images are all over the internet.
The best-case scenario, from the thieves’ perspective, is to break them down, melt the precious metals and sell the gems separately.
Empress Eugenie’s crown, which the perpetrators took and subsequently dropped as they fled the scene on motor scooters, contains eight gold eagles, 1,354 brilliant-cut diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds. In short, this amounts to a sizeable stash of individual gems to try and sell.
Timing is everything
For the Louvre, any heist is a major blow. It calls into question their security, both electronic and human. Five security staff were nearby who acted to protect visitors and the alarms did ring, but the entire heist was completed within seven minutes.
Timing is crucial with heists.
In 2019, an 18-karat gold toilet titled America (2016), from the artist Maurizio Cattelan, was stolen from Blenheim Palace, England. It was taken in five and a half minutes. It weighed 98 kilograms and was fully functioning. In other words, the two men who took it (and were later caught and served prison sentences for their crimes) worked quickly and efficiently. At the time of the theft, as gold bullion it was estimated to be valued at A$6 million.
Van Gogh’s painting The Parsonage Garden at Neunen in Spring (1884) was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum, in the Netherlands, during their 2020 COVID closure. It was recovered in late 2023 after an investigation by Dutch art detective Arthur Brand.
The 2017 theft of two Gottfried Lindauer paintings from Auckland’s International Art Centre took just a few minutes to complete. The thieves ram-raided the front window of the auction house where the paintings, valued at NZ$1 million, were displayed. The portraits were recovered five years later through an intermediary, with only minor damage.
Recovering the stolen
The National Gallery of Victoria’s Picasso painting Weeping Woman (1937) was famously taken by the Australian Cultural Terrorists in 1986 – but only noticed as missing two days later.
Recovered just over two weeks later, the painting was left for the gallery staff to collect in a locker at Spencer Street railway station. The motivation behind the theft was to highlight the lack of financial support given to Victorian artists, but the true identity of the thieves remains a mystery.
In 1986, 26 paintings of religious subjects were stolen from the gallery at the Benedictine Monastery at New Norcia, Western Australia.
The thieves were poor planners: they hadn’t factored in that three men and the stash of paintings couldn’t fit into a Ford Falcon. The paintings were cut from their frames, ostensibly butchered. One was completely destroyed. The thieves were caught and charged.
Where to next for the thief?
Recovery of objects from heists is low. It’s impossible to put a number on but some say art recoveries globally are possibly as low as 10%.
Paintings are more difficult to sell on – you can’t change their physical appearance to the point of not being recognised.
However, with objects such as the gold toilet or jewels, the precious materials and gems can be repurposed. Time will tell if the Napoleonic jewels will be recovered.
Never say never. The Mona Lisa (1503), undoubtedly the main attraction at the Louvre, was stolen in 1911 and recovered two years later. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, was an Italian handyman working at the Louvre and was caught trying to sell it.
This latest heist at the Louvre highlights the vulnerability of objects in public collections. The irony being they’re often gifted to such institutions for safekeeping.
Those who guard objects are usually paid a minimum wage and yet they are tasked with a huge responsibility. When budget cuts are made, it’s often security staff that are reduced – such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ announcement just last week.(Editor’s note: This article was originally published on October 20, 2025.)
The thieves on Sunday knew what they were after and why. We aren’t privy to their motivation. We know the stolen jewels are part of France’s history and are irreplaceable. Their theft denies visitors of experiencing them individually for their beauty and craftsmanship, as well as collectively within the context of France’s history.
But part of me can’t help thinking how the French were partial to helping themselves to artworks and precious objects belonging to others. So perhaps this could be a case of déjà vu.
(To read the Chinese version of this article, please click: 〈從蒙娜麗莎到黃金馬桶，如今又是羅浮宮的皇家珠寶：關於藝術竊案的有趣歷史〉)
＊This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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# 國際 # 法國 # 英文新聞 # 藝術

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潘妮洛普．傑克森（Penelope Jackson）

作者

查爾斯特大學社會工作與藝術學院兼任研究員。潘妮洛普．傑克森博士是屢獲殊榮的藝術史學家，著有4本關於藝術犯罪的非虛構書籍，包括榮獲澳洲與紐西蘭藝術學會2023年藝術寫作與出版最佳書籍獎的《The Art of Copying Art》（Palgrave Macmillan出版）。她曾擔任公立美術館館長與策展人，因其對藝術犯罪研究和視覺藝術的貢獻，於2024年獲澳洲國立大學的威廉．多貝爾爵士研究獎學金，並於2023年獲頒紐西蘭功績勳章。她現為查爾斯特大學兼任研究員。她的新書《UNSEEN: Art and Crime in Australia》（Monash University Publishing出版）將於2025年12月出版。 Adjunct Research Associate, School of Social Work and Arts, Charles Sturt University. Dr Penelope Jackson MNZM is an award-winning art historian. She has published four nonfiction books about art crime, including The Art of Copying Art (Palgrave Macmillan), which won Best Book in the 2023 Art Writing and Publishing Awards in the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. A former public art gallery director and curator, Jackson was awarded a Sir William Dobell Fellowship at the Australian National University in 2024 and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2023 for her services to art crime research and the visual arts. She is an Adjunct Research Associate at Charles Sturt University. Her latest book, UNSEEN: Art and Crime in Australia (Monash University Publishing) will be published in December 2025.

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