“Cold case” solved at the Louvre.
Forty years after being stolen, two works of art dating from the mid-16th century were finally returned, Wednesday March 3, to the Parisian museum.
The police found their trace during a succession in Bordeaux, without being, for the time being, determined the exact circumstances of their theft.
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Gold encrusted pieces of armor
The two jewels - a helmet and an armor backplate (upper back) - had been bequeathed to the Louvre in 1922 by the Rothschild family, before being stolen there on the night of May 31, 1983, in circumstances that did not exist. have never been cleared up.
Until this day in mid-January, when an expert in military antiquities, asked to appraise these works in the context of the succession of a Bordeaux resident, alerted the police officers of the Central Office for the fight against the trafficking of cultural goods (OCBC).
His doubts about the origins of the pieces were confirmed after checking on the Treima, the file which currently lists 100,000 stolen works of art, said Commissioner Frédéric Malon, deputy director in charge of the fight against organized crime at the Central Directorate. of the judicial police.
The police official also recalled that some nine hundred works were stolen in 2020.
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The investigation, opened by the Bordeaux prosecutor's office for concealment, will try to determine how these works landed with the Bordeaux individual whose family was settling the succession.
In the meantime, the Louvre is savoring the return of these two pieces inlaid with gold and silver using the damascening technique, probably made by a Milanese workshop around 1560-1580.
A "favorable" scenario
"I was sure that we would see them reappear one day because they are too special objects"
, applauds Philippe Malgouyres, chief heritage curator at the Louvre's art department.
"But I could not imagine that the scenario is so favorable: that it is about a concealment in France and that the two objects are still together"
, he added, specifying that it is of
"prestige weapons, expertise virtuoso, somewhat equivalent luxury cars today"
.
"In the 16th century in the West, weapons become very luxury items, armor becomes a place of luxury and ornament which has nothing to do with its use,"
he explained.
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According to Jean-Luc Martinez, the president and director of the Louvre, the last theft in the most visited museum in the world - before the pandemic - dates back to 1998.
"A painting by
[Jean-Baptiste Camille]
Corot that we are still looking for"
, he clarified.