Stealing the Mona Lisa

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

The Return of the Mona Lisa to the Louvre Museum in 1914
(Wikimedia Commons)

Netflix has released a 4-part series, This is a Robbery, about the unsolved Gardner Museum heist of thirteen works of art. Thirty years later, the story still fascinates—where are the paintings and why has no one returned them for the ten million dollar reward and guarantee of no prosecution? As the largest art heist in history, the story has received massive amounts of publicity with no substantive result.

Because major works of highly recognizable art are considered to be non-marketable, the reasons for their theft are often hard to discern. The billionaire recluse orchestrating the theft of a favorite painting for his personal collection seems to be a long-shot. Instead, using the stolen art as ransom or as a way to reduce sentencing for other crimes or criminals may be more likely.

Another art heist that is no longer in the headlines, but was e…