Steal Me | Part 1. History of art heists

and this is the first episode of the series still me where i'm going to be talking about few famous art heists in history let me first amuse you by telling you the three main sort of categories of heists and obviously we all know quite a lot about museum heists but do you know that actually number one and the most common heist is not the museum heist but it's a church heist why is that well first of all churches are usually lesser protected Often, not always, but quite often, the art inside the churches would be sort of not world famous art piece.

So again, there are cases when Caravaggio was stolen from the church, but it's not always the case.

And often the art inside the church could be by the lesser known artists.

So the chances of the wilder public knowing that there is a particular religious art piece on the market and trying to trace the identity of the thieves is much less than with the big and famous art piece from the museum and also the churches from let's say smaller churches from smaller towns get targeted much more than obviously this St. Peter's Basilica or Famous churches, though I'll be discussing one, quite a famous church case here as well.

So, let me also name you the rating of the countries where churches get heisted the most.

First would be Italy.

The peak was in the 90s, early 00s.

I think per year, the report would say that there were from 2,000 to 3,000 hikes per year registered.

And I think around this year, it's around...

I think 500 highs.

And then the second place would be Spain, Greece, and then goes Russia and Poland.

While also Russia and Poland was quite a good area for, not good obviously, but easy target for thieves to steal.

Because I do believe that stealing art is always a crime and it's very dangerous.

Basically, I really disrespect people who steal art and also who steal art from the church.

But anyway, why was it so? Because during the Soviet Union, churches were not protected, and also the Soviet government was not religious, so they would not on purpose pay a lot of attention to the treasures of the church, and there was quite a big...

grey sort of like under the table market of icons that's why it was quite a prosperous ground also there was there is always by the way quite a strong connection between the museums all over the world.

So if you heist something, which I really think you should not, and it's completely illegal, repeating it again, I'll be repeating it more and more, but no matter which country you'll bring it to, most likely the museums or the people will report it.

So But anyway, during the Soviet Union, this communication was quite strong, but it was a bit less when we talk about, again, iconos and some church treasures, especially if we mention iconos from smaller churches and smaller cities.

Second, it would be private collections.

And also, again, quite often you would have collectors like, let's say, Kaplan, whose actually drawing was just sold in South Abyss a few weeks ago, has quite a famous collection, who invested a lot in the publicity of it, who whose collection has been widely documented, and I think even now it's been tokenized in a way.

Obviously, he's a wealthy individual.

He has everything insured.

He has quite a good security of everyone, which I believe that every collector should do.

But...

Anyway, with, for example, collections like this, obviously one steals something which, again, they should not.