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ENVY - Art Theft through the ages
precis of a speech given by Ivan Lindsay at the 'MENSA at Cambridge 2008' conference at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, 1/7/2008
Mensa at Cambridge 2008 -
31 July to 4 August, Magdalene College, Cambridge
The Seven Deadly Sins
SLOTH GREED WRATH GLUTTONY PRIDE ENVY LUST
Join us along with our line up of top International speakers, each allocated a deadly sin to talk on and for you to debate!
Pick their brains/disagree/worship at meals, in the bar, throw boomerangs or cling to a punt pole.
Meet the speakers for Mensa at Cambridge 2008:
Dr Martin Knight trained at St Bartholomew's and St Thomas', his research training was established at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.
Working as a consultant orthopaedic and spinal surgeon, Martin is a pioneer of minimally invasive spinal surgery and is the founder of a charity called The Spinal Foundation. www.spinal-foundation.org
Carol Boyle one of the few researchers seeking to establish the foundations of the science of sustainability, focusing on complex, dynamic systems which fluctuate over time and space due to various internal and external cycles and changes. This new science is leading to changes in the way we think about our society, our lifestyles and our future and how we engineer products, houses and infrastructure. Just possibly, it may shift human society towards becoming sustainable.
Dr Jack Cohen is the internationally known reproductive biologist. He has a laboratory in his kitchen, helps couples get pregnant, invents biologically realistic aliens for science fiction writers and in his spare time, throws boomerangs. Jack, who has more letters to his name than can be repeated here, writes, lectures, talks and campaigns to promote public awareness of science, particularly biology. His latest campaign is to see lakes in his local Gloucestershire area cleaned up! travel.
Duncan Orr-Ewing works for the RSPB in Scotland, Duncan is a qualified Chartered Surveyor.
His role covers the management of RSPB Scotland's 65,000 hectares of Nature Reserves, coordinating our species recovery and policy work, as well as our practical advice to land managers to benefit key bird species (for example corncrake, capercaillie and white-tailed eagle).
Claire Enders started Enders Analysis in 1997 and leads the company. She previously worked in senior corporate development and strategy roles in all sectors of the UK entertainment industry (including cable, television and music). Claire holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from London Business School. Today, Enders Analysis offers its subscribers research generated by a programme covering the major commercial, regulatory and strategic issues in mobile and fixed line telecoms, TV and the Internet, as well as the major content businesses such as music, publishing and advertising.
Ivan Lindsay was educated at Eton College and Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. He spent 4 years serving in the British army and has over 20 years' experience in the Art World. Ivan set up Lindsay Fine Art Ltd in 1990 to deal in European Old Master paintings. The Russian paintings division was formed in 2004 with an emphasis on 20th century painting and a particular interest in the post-war Moscow School 1940-1980.
“Vae Victis!”
Brennus, Chief of the Sennones on conquering Rome in 387 BC, ‘Woe to the vanquished’ or more recently translated as ‘To the Victor the spoils’.
Good morning Mensa, I am going to talk today about art theft through the ages, from antiquity up until the present day.
We will look at the exploits of the leading looters and art thieves through history such as Gaius Verres, Gustavus Adolphus, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and examine what they took and why they took it. Coveting the goods and property of one’s neighbour appears to be wired into human DNA and is probably an evolutionary trait that is indistinguishable from man trying to improve his life and surroundings. Historians have tended to overlook looting as a powerful motivation behind some of the expansionist plans of History’s leading warlords.
As early as the Roman period contemporary historians commentated on how the acquisition of gold and artworks was an acceptable reason for an invasion by an ambitious general of the Imperial army seeking a ‘Triumph’ whereby he could parade his spoilia through the streets of Rome. Napoleon was driven by his desire to loot art that would enhance the reputation of France and Hitler’s planned super museum at Linz was to be filled with stolen art, provided the Fuhrer’s major interest in life, and underpinned the planning of the Nazi expansion.
The bible says in Exodus 20:17, ‘You should not covet your neighbour’s house. You should not set your heart on your neighbour’s wife, or slave, man or woman, or ox, or donkey, or any of your neighbour’s possessions.’ Many early Christian thinkers struggled with trying to understand man’s desire for his neighbour’s goods such as St John Cassian (360 – 435), Pope St Gregory the Great (540 – 604) and St Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274). The bible lists Greed and Envy as two of the 7 deadly sins and Dante describes them as an excessive love of earthly goods.
Throughout recorded history armies have attacked neighbouring tribes, cities and countries and removed their property. Sargan II ruled Syria between 727 and 705 BC from his palace at Dur-Sharrukin near modern-day Mosul in Iraq and conquered most of the Eastern Mediterranean, removing all religious artefacts, works of art, archives, military banners, musical instruments, armour, gold and silver. From one temple complex in the city of Musasit he removed one ton of gold, five tons of silver and 334,000 objects.
Nebuchadnezzar II (630–562 BC), King of Babylon, defeated all his neighbours and sacked Jerusalem in 587 BC, enslaving the Jewish population and emptying the Temple of Solomon of all its gold (2 Kings 24:13). With the proceeds he rebuilt his capital of Babylon, including populating the Hanging Gardens (which became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) with Persian trees and plants to remind his homesick wife Amytis of her native land.
In the early Greek period respectful behaviour was usually adopted towards the statues of defeated foes so as not to offend the gods, but by the Hellenistic period wide scale looting became prevalent. Dionysus of Syracuse (c. 430–367 BC) drove the Carthaginians out of Sicily before removing the gold mantle of Zeus at Olympios, as well as statues, gold objects and the gold crowns from statues’ heads.
Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) financed his campaigns by looting, and emptied the Persian treasuries of Susa, Sardis and Persepolis of over 4,500 tons of gold. During the Roman Empire looting was acceptable and expected during times of war; when a general had killed over 5000 of the enemy, captured the king or queen of the vanquished, and had a sizable enough quantity of loot, he was allowed to parade his spolia through the streets of Rome in an officially sanctioned ‘Triumph’.
During the 4th Crusade Doge Enrico Dandolo sacked and looted Constantinople in 1196, filling the treasury of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice with Byzantine treasure, where it remains today.
In the Renaissance, princes regularly raided each other, such as in 1502 when Cesare Borgia sacked Urbino, reserving the statues for Isabella D’Este.
Henry VIII emptied the English monasteries in the 1530s and the Spanish adventurers Francisco Pizarro and Herman Cortes subjugated the Incan and Aztec empires before removing their gold and shipping it to Spain, although some was intercepted by Sir Francis Drake.
In the 17th century, Sweden, under King Gustavus Adolphus, pillaged Northern Europe in the Thirty Years War before his daughter, Queen Christina, stole the collections of the late Rudolf II from Prague in 1649, including over 1,000 paintings.
Napoleon financed his campaigns by looting, and stole artworks from Egypt, Italy, Spain and Germany, trying to legalise his actions by forcing the vanquished to sign treaties such as the Treaty of Tolentino with the Vatican in 1797.
Between 1939 and 1945 Germany removed 592.48 tons of gold from the occupied countries and looted an estimated 20% of Europe’s artworks. The art went to Hitler’s henchmen like Herman Goring who had over 1,500 paintings at his country estate Karinhall and towards Hitler’s intended Fuhrermuseum at Linz in Austria, for which 6,000 paintings were reserved.
When the Russians started finding German depositories of art in salt mines and monasteries on their advance in 1944 Stalin gave the order for it to be removed, and over three million objects were brought to Russia where, except for some items returned to Dresden (then under Russian control) in 1956, they have remained. In 2000 the Russians passed a law in the Duma that states that as Russia did not start the war, and they lost 25m people, they view the art they ‘rescued’ as compensation.
Art theft has continued at a steady rate since WWII. Interpol has had a dedicated department for art theft since 1947 and circulates a list of stolen artworks which now contains over 30,000 items. The top fifty most valuable paintings are an astonishing selection, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Caravaggio, Rubens, Picasso, Renoir, van Gogh and Monet.
The Art Loss Register, the London based leading private database of stolen art, lists over 180,000 missing items includes 182 Warhols and 569 Picassos and its chairman, Julian Radcliffe, calculates that round 3% of works circulating on the art market at any one time have been stolen.
The masterpieces still outstanding have been described as the ‘Museum of the Missing’ and, although it is tempting to think there might be a mastermind enjoying his collection in a bunker somewhere in Russia or South America, Radcliffe quickly scotches this favourite fantasy of both film and literature, saying that in over 2,000 cases he has investigated, only 2 were not stolen for financial gain. It is odd, however, how many masterpieces stolen in the last twenty years have simply disappeared into thin air.
Looking into looted art also leads to an examination of the restitution of loot and artworks and how ideas towards this sensitive subject have changed over time. Although the Romans first institutionalised the removal of plunder as the legitimate property of the victor they made a clear distinction between removing artworks and gold from a defeated enemy and stealing property from enemies or allies outside of war.
In a famous Roman legal case in the first century BC the young prosecutor Marcus Tullius Cicero made his name with the prosecution of the Sicilian Governor, Gauis Verres, for looting Sicily. In his opening speech he said, “The charge against Gauis Verres is that during a period of three years he has laid waste the province of Sicily: that he has plundered Sicilian communities, stripped bare Sicilian homes, and pillaged Sicilian temples. Here before you, here with their tale of wrong, stand the whole Sicilian people.” Cicero examined many of the questions that have plagued art restitution ever since such as: Who should own art? Why do we value art? Does art have a fixed location where it belongs? What should happen during times of war? When should victors be allowed to keep art and when not?
Roman legal thinking and Cicero’s codification of Roman law have influenced ideas on restitution and been used to prosecute looters ever since. In the 1780’s Edmund Burke made extensive use of the Verrines (Cicero’s lectures in the Verres case) in his prosecution of Warren Hastings for extortion in India.
In 1996, nearly 2000 years after Cicero’s speeches on behalf of the Sicilians, Edgar Bronfman, Chairman of the World Jewish Congress, was to make a similar appeal to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on behalf of the Jewish people whilst pursuing the Swiss government for alleged crimes during WWII, “I speak to you today on behalf of the Jewish people. With reverence, I also speak to you on behalf of the six million who cannot speak for themselves.”
For a millennium and a half, the Roman model of ‘To the Victor the Spoils’ was considered appropriate and normal and the wealth of the vanquished became the property of the victor.
At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1638 during the 30 Years War some token efforts at restitution provided for a limited return of property to the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire but did not force Queen Christina of Sweden to give back the extensive collections of Rudolf II of Prague that she had removed the year before. The Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, ending an intense period of conflict between Spain and France, was important because it dictated some specific restitution measures and set up an international body of arbitrators to enforce it.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 returned much of Napoleon’s extensive looted property to its country of origin and instigated the first major restitution in history since Cyrus the Great returned the sacred items to The Temple in Jerusalem after his seizure of Babylon in the 5th century BC. The Congress also made the first attempt to develop a legal and ethical framework for the ancient Latin concept of restitus.
During the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln asked Dr Francis Lieber of Columbia College in New York to develop a code of conduct designed to protect cultural, educational and charitable property from looting and destruction. The ‘Lieber Code’ as it came to be known served as the basis for the 1874 Brussels conference which declared that cultural property, even when state owned, should be treated as private property and exempted from seizure by an invading army.
Two conferences followed at The Hague in 1899 and 1907 which attempted to regularize the rules of warfare and limit destruction of cultural property but the laws on looting were flouted in the carnage of WWI between 1914 – 1918. In the tough treaties concluded at the end of the Great War the Hague conventions were used as the basis for the Allied measures regarding restitution and in the Versailles Treaty, Article 245, Germany was required to return all, “trophies, archives, historical souvenirs, or works of art carried away from France by the German authorities in the course of 1870 – 1871 and during The World War.”
A series of conferences on restitution continued in the inter war years at the International Museums Office of the League of Nations as it became clear another conflict was in the air. However, the withdrawal of Japan, Germany and Italy weakened the League and its draft on an “International Agreement to protect Arts and Monuments in the Time of War” was ignored by Nazi Germany which went on a looting rampage only exceeded by the Soviets at the end of WWII.
The restitution of the Europe’s artworks that were looted during and after WWII is a complicated story that is still unfolding today. There was considerable energy put towards restitution by the Americans who set up a dedicated unit called the Monuments and Fine Arts and Archives division staffed by the ‘Monuments men’. After 1950, exhaustion set in, and restitution was largely ignored until the end of the 20th century when, in a fin de siècle burst of energy several large or valuable collections were restituted to Jewish owners such as The 5 Bloch Bauer Klimt’s, which were then sold for US$250m, and the Goudstikker collection.
AS the 21st century unfolds, due to all the stirrings of activist groups such as the New York based World Jewish Congress which managed to extract US2.5bn from the Swiss banks for alleged monies left in Jewish accounts and Euros 6bn from German companies for their use of slave labour during WWII, the mood seems again to be turning, and this time against restitution.
There is a feeling advanced by persons such as Norman Rosenthal, the ex head of exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London, whose own family suffered in the Holocaust, that the grandchildren of Jewish owners who lost their paintings during WWII do not have much connection with the paintings or a definite right to receive them from their current owner.
Only 15% of stolen art works are ever recovered so the message to art collectors is to look after your art works because if something is stolen the chances are that you will never see it again. Art theft has been a fact of life since history began. Human nature doesn’t change and whether reading the Greek tragedies, the Bible or Shakespeare it is clear that people are exactly the same as they always were. Coveting the goods belonging to ones neighbour, as expressly forbidden by the 10th Commandment in the Jewish/Christian tradition, seems however to be a basic tenet of human nature and it appears that, as long as man is able, he will be stealing the art that belongs to others.
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