#264: ART OBJECTS: LOST OR STOLEN OR STRAYED-II.  In Boston in 1990, two men disguised as policemen gained entry to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; they tied up the two night guards, disabled the very rudimentary security system (the Gardner having been too hard up for state-of-the-art) and, over eighty-one minutes, made off with some thirteen works of art—the single largest property theft in history.  The works stolen ranged from one of the only thirty-four paintings definitely attributed to Vermeer and three Rembrandt oils to a finial from the pole of a Napoleonic banner and a Shang Dynasty drinking vessel.  The choices—including some Degas sketches and a Manet oil—were curious and erratic.  They skated past Botticelli and Michelangelo, and never got far enough upstairs to grab Titian’s “Rape of Europa,” thought to be the prize of the collection.  A large ransom is still on offer, but none of the pieces has ever been recovered; one attempt in 1994 to negotiate a return evaporated.  Since the theft many of the people suspected of involvement have aged out, passing to a greater reward than any offered by a museum. 

       There is one vivid and visible particular in the whole affair.  When ceding the museum to the public, Gardner left the condition that the entire building should be preserved as it was, with the paintings and objets left precisely in place.  Because of this dictum, the walls of the museum are startlingly punctuated with empty frames and spaces, giving the stolen works an insistent and unignorable absence.  The theft remains one of the most infamous and discussed of all art heists and persists ruefully in local memory.  It makes a sort of guest appearance in Michael Dowling’s charming novel, Breakfast with Scot, but the eponymous hero, a gay couple’s alarmingly effeminate young ward, is mostly interested in casing the joint for ideas for window treatments.  Museums have so many unexpected uses.

       Most art thefts are not usually a matter of personal offense, but I was working in a bookshop in Harvard Square when the theft occurred, and the Gardner was a semi-regular stop for me, especially if I had visitors.  Both the Vermeer and the Rembrandt (“Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” his only seascape) were favorites of mine, which I would say hello to every time I went.  And now I won’t be able to do that any more, for which I hold the thieves in great personal dislike; let this paragraph stand not only as an historic note but an Agincourt salute to the people who made off with two of my life’s little pleasures.  On the scale of injustices, this is miniscule, I know, but it is an injustice done to every person who will now never get to see these paintings ever again.  In Michael White’s book Travels in Vermeer, he detailed how, after the coup de foudre of seeing Vermeer’s “Milkmaid” in the Risjksmusuem, he set himself to see as many Vermeers as he could to rescue himself from the sorrow of a divorce; I’d always felt, sadly, that I would forever be one up on him, having seen “The Concert” before it was stolen.  Now there’ll be no catching up for anyone.  At least the bastards left the Giotto. 

Stolen: The Gardner Theft (Benna Books, 2018) is a modest memorial volume showing the stolen works, and listing the ten million dollar reward offered for information leading to their return, should you happen onto one of them in a thrift shop.  The Gardner Heist, by Ulrich Boser (Harper, 2010) is a good account of the whole affair.  Michael Downing’s Breakfast with Scot (Counterpoint, 1999) and Michael White’s Travels in Vermeer (Persea, 2015) are still in print.

And for the lighter side of art theft, I can happily send you to the seven “art-history mystery” novels written by Iain Pears, which are consistently droll, nicely paced, entertaining, and have enough art-historical references to assure you Pears knows well whereof he speaks.  The stories, based in Rome, revolve around three recurring characters: General Taddeo Bottando, the oracular head of the Art Theft Squad, possessed of the long-timer’s bemused and weary practical sense of the things that shouldn’t be but are; his assistant, Flavia de Stefano, who does the investigating and observing; and the series’ wild card onlooker, Jonathan Argyll.  Argyll is an Englishman in Rome and an art dealer, soon to be Flavia’s inamorata, and a funny combination of historical knowledge and dark intuition; he is, like life, what happens when you’re making other plans.  He’s the inconvenient person who’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time, but often for the right reason, and he’s the character by whom Pears’ ingeniously plotted stories lurch towards resolution.  The stories themselves skip lightly along, with just the right degree of allusion and convolution; the settings, from Rome to various points elsewhere, are quickly sketched; and the general tone is one of civilized amusement at what people do get up to.  For a large part Pears manages to avoid one pitfall of the mystery novel, those lumbering end-chapters where the writer has to Explain What Happened and get himself out of the elaborate plot-hole he’s dug himself into (yes, Agatha Christie, I’m looking at you).   And with Flavia and Argyll we have the pleasure of the company and the relationship of two decent and considerate people—people you’d want to spend time with.  This is an often underrated gift of mystery series, á la Sayers’s Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Colin Cotterill’s Doctor Siri and Madame Daeng, Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti and his Henry James-addicted wife Paola, Deborah Crombie’s Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, and—lest we forget—Holmes and Watson, the most endearing, enduring and prickly-pear domestic duo in the history of the genre.

      Of the seven of the Pears novels, my favorites are probably The Bernini Bust, Death and Restoration, and the last, The Immaculate Deception, where Pears gets his trio nicely wrapped up for a very satisfying finale.  The stories at their best are like a nice, sunny-day outdoor lunch at your favorite osteria—and every bit as satisfying. 

The seven novels, in order, are: The Raphael Affair, The Titian Committee, The Bernini Bust, The Last Judgement, Giotto’s Hand, Death and Restoration, and The Immaculate Deception.  All are in print.