Vasari Art Codex

article news schedule Oct 24, 2025 visibility 4 link 1 artist, 1 gallery

louvre heist security experts prevent art theft 1234758458

On Sunday at around 9:30 a.m., robbers broke into the Louvre's Apollo Gallery using a cherry picker and an angle grinder, stealing nine pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $102 million in less than eight minutes. ARTnews consulted security experts who noted that the theft exploited systemic vulnerabilities, pointing to a pattern of recent museum heists including the Natural History Museum in Paris, the Drents Museum in the Netherlands, and the Dresden crown jewels theft in Germany. The Louvre had previously faced staff walkouts over inadequate security staffing, and director Laurence des Cars has requested a police station be installed at the museum.

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article news schedule Nov 17, 2025 visibility 6 link 3 artists, 2 galleries

stolen banksy print recovered thief sentenced 2536351

A judge at London's Kingston Crown Court sentenced Larry Fraser to 13 months in jail for stealing a Banksy print of the iconic *Balloon Girl* image from Grove Gallery in September 2024. Fraser, who pleaded guilty, used a hammer to break a glass door and stole the print in 36 seconds, hoping to pay off a drug debt. The Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad recovered the artwork within days after Fraser and accomplice James Love stashed it on the Isle of Dogs. Love was acquitted by a jury, claiming he was unaware of the theft until after the fact.

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gavel restitution schedule Nov 11, 2025 visibility 2 link 3 artists, 2 galleries

stolen painting saint francis returned mexico church 1234761129

A painting of Saint Francis of Assisi, stolen from the Church of San Francisco de Asis in Teotihuacán, Mexico, in 2001, has been recovered and returned to the church. The six-foot-tall work, painted in 1747 by an unknown artist, was among 18 artworks taken in a nighttime theft. It resurfaced in 2018 when it was consigned to Mexico City auction house Morton Subastas, whose due diligence with the Art Loss Register flagged it as stolen. The painting, valued at 280,000 Mexican pesos ($15,000), was returned to the church in a ceremony led by Padre Teodoro García Romero.

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article news schedule Oct 7, 2025 visibility 6 link 18 artists, 3 galleries

art insurance los angeles wildfires 1234755619

Ron Rivlin, owner of Revolver Gallery in Los Angeles and a prolific collector of Andy Warhol works, lost his custom-built Pacific Palisades home and 340 artworks—including 30 Warhols and pieces by Keith Haring, John Baldessari, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, and Kenny Scharf—to the wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County beginning January 7, 2025. The fires, fueled by powerful winds and dry conditions, consumed approximately 60,718 acres and 17,291 structures, with 30 fatalities. Other artists and arts professionals, including Beatriz Cortez, Amir Nikravan, Salomón Huerta, and curator Paul Schimmel, also reported losing homes and artworks. The loss to Rivlin's collection alone is estimated at $15 million.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

article news schedule Oct 7, 2025 visibility 6 link 18 artists, 3 galleries

art insurance los angeles wildfires 1234755619

Ron Rivlin, owner of Revolver Gallery in Los Angeles and a prolific collector of Andy Warhol works, lost his Pacific Palisades home and 340 artworks—including 30 Warhols and pieces by Keith Haring, John Baldessari, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, and Kenny Scharf—to the January 2025 wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County. The fires, fueled by powerful winds and dry conditions, consumed approximately 60,718 acres and 17,291 structures, killing 30 people. Numerous other artists, collectors, and arts professionals, including Beatriz Cortez, Amir Nikravan, Salomón Huerta, and curator Paul Schimmel, also reported losing homes and artworks.

newspaper ARTnews open_in_new Read original

gavel restitution schedule Apr 20, 2026 visibility 10 link 5 artists

Rare Books Stolen From Ex-MoMA President’s Home Recovered After Nearly 40 Years

Seventeen rare books, valued at over $2 million and stolen nearly 40 years ago from the Long Island estate of former Museum of Modern Art president John Hay Whitney, have been recovered and will be formally returned to his descendants. The trove includes a first edition of James Joyce's *Finnegan's Wake*, letters from Oscar Wilde, and a portfolio of John Keats's love letters worth $2 million.

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gavel restitution schedule Apr 20, 2026 source 2 sources visibility 7 link 2 artists

Rare Books Stolen from Former MoMA President Are Returned

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., has returned 17 rare books, collectively valued at nearly $3 million, to the heirs of John Hay and Betsey Cushing Whitney. The books were stolen from the couple's Long Island estate in the 1980s and include a bound collection of John Keats's love letters, a signed James Joyce volume, and an illustrated Brothers Grimm book. The recovery followed a tip from Manhattan book dealers in 2015, leading to search warrants executed in 2025 and 2026.

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article news schedule Nov 27, 2025 visibility 5 link 8 artists, 2 galleries

Repeat art fraudster arrested for stealing Courbet painting

London gallery owner Patrick Matthiesen consigned a Gustave Courbet painting, *Mother and Child on a Hammock* (1844), to the Nicholas Hall Gallery in New York for Tefaf Maastricht 2023, listed at $650,000. After it failed to sell, Matthiesen was contacted by a man calling himself Thomas Doyle (also A.J. Doyle), who claimed to be a former US Air Force pilot, government contractor, and art dealer with family ties to Doyle Auctions. Despite Doyle having 11 prior fraud convictions—including stealing a bronze Degas statue in 2007—Matthiesen was convinced by artworks Doyle sent for inspection, including works attributed to El Greco, Rubens, and a Michelangelo drawing. In 2024, Doyle borrowed the Courbet to show a potential buyer and never returned it. Doyle has now been arrested for the theft.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

gavel restitution schedule Mar 5, 2026 visibility 4 link 6 artists, 1 gallery

Major Brazilian art heist still unsolved as statute of limitations expires

The statute of limitations has officially expired on the 2006 heist at the Museu da Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro, one of the most significant art thefts in Brazilian history. During the chaos of Carnival, armed thieves overpowered guards and stole masterpieces by Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. Despite the works being valued at over $10 million and listed on international databases like Interpol and the Art Loss Register, the perpetrators were never identified and the art remains missing.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

trending_up market schedule Dec 4, 2025 visibility 7 link 7 artists, 1 gallery

Medieval triptych ventures out of Dorset to sell for £5.7m in London Old Master auctions

A late 15th-century Netherlandish triptych, *The Five Miracles of Christ*, sold for £5.7 million at Sotheby’s London Old Master auction. The work, kept for centuries at St. John’s Almshouse in Sherborne, Dorset, had never before appeared on the market. The charity sold it to fund affordable housing, and the buyer—an unnamed Christian charitable foundation—plans to keep the painting publicly viewable in the town. Other highlights included a Rembrandt reattribution, *Saint John on Patmos*, which sold for £6.8 million, and a record £3.2 million for a Hans Eworth portrait of the 4th Duke of Norfolk.

newspaper The Art Newspaper open_in_new Read original

gavel restitution schedule Oct 22, 2025 visibility 1

Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood woodblocks rescued from eBay sale go on display in UK

A collection of 27 original woodblocks hand-carved by British artists Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood, dating from 1930 to 1950, was rescued from an eBay sale through collaboration between the artists' heirs and the Art Loss Register (ALR). The blocks, believed missing or stolen since the 1950s, were listed on eBay last summer, prompting the family—including daughter Anne Ullman and granddaughter Ella Ravilious—to contact the ALR to halt the sale. The blocks have now been catalogued and split between The Fry Art Gallery in Suffolk and Towner Eastbourne, where they are on public display.

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article news schedule Apr 29, 2026 visibility 3 link 2 artists, 1 gallery

Open Letter on Auction of “Tributes” to the Russian Avant-Garde

An open letter signed by art historians, curators, and researchers protests an upcoming auction at Stanley's Auction House in Zaventem, Belgium, scheduled for April 23, titled “Tributes to the Russian Avant-Garde & Constructivists.” The second sale is organized in cooperation with Drouot, a major French auction platform, and offers approximately one hundred works from the so-called Toporovsky collection, which has been linked to a scandal involving forged Russian modernist paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent. The alleged suppliers, Igor Toporovsky and Olga Toporovsky, face criminal charges including the sale of 171 forged works for about €20 million, with court proceedings beginning in May in Ghent. The signatories argue that the auction, with works priced around €300 each, is deeply troubling given the pending legal case and the undisclosed consignor identity.

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gavel restitution schedule Jul 25, 2025 link 2 artists, 1 gallery

king tutankhamen egyptian artifact auction grasshopper 1234748248

An intricately carved ivory and wood grasshopper from the Age of Tutankhamun, known as the 'Guennol Grasshopper,' is set to be auctioned by Apollo Art Auctions in July with an estimate of £300,000–£500,000. Egyptian art historians, including German Egyptologist Christian Loeben, have raised concerns that the cosmetic vessel may have been stolen by British archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb and allegedly kept some items for his own collection. The auction house states there is no documented evidence linking the object to the tomb, and it has been cleared against the Art Loss Register, but experts like former Met director Thomas Hoving have long connected it to the pharaoh’s burial.

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