‘The Last Judgement’: The unbelievable story of the first recorded art heist
If art thiefs were actually devotees of the medium, it would make for a welcomed change. Just imagine it, an Ocean’s 11 style crew of art historians, all teaming up to liberate a Van Gogh masterpiece from the clutches of a billionaire fuckwit who bought it to fill the void in his soul.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. My vision of a deconstructivist demolitions expert, a brutalist heavy and a futurist hacker will have to remain in the screenplay that I swear I’ll get around to soon. Sadly, art theft happens because art retains value like almost nothing else. Cars need constant tinkering, and even then, a Lamborghini will become obsolete eventually. Art, however, is often a very worthy investment if you know where to look.
Naturally, it’s also a prohibitively expensive world to get into. However, you can sneakily circumvent the entry fee by just stealing the fuckers and selling them on the black market. Simple as anything, I don’t know why more people don’t get involved…
It’s an age old practise as well, one that countless thieves, con-artists and ne’er-do-wells of all descriptions have been known to get involved in for hundreds of years. People have been putting valuations on art for nearly as long as humans have been making it, and where there’s value, there’s theft.
In fact, the very first recorded art theft dates back to 1473. Fittingly enough for someone stealing a piece of art, it is both literally and metaphorically a form of piracy. The artwork in question was Hans Memling’s triptych The Last Judgement, a piece commissioned by a banker from Florence, Angelo Tani, who wanted a centrepiece for his family’s chapel. He commissioned the piece in 1467, and Memling, then a citizen of Bruges, got to work painting it.
Six years later, it was finished, and all that was left was to deliver the painting from Bruges to Florence. Sounds simple, right?
How was it stolen?
The painting was finished in April 1473, and arrangements were made for the piece to be transported to Florence via the sea, on the galleon San Matteo. Given that this was a ship leaving Bruges, the San Matteo first had to pass through the English Channel on the way down to the Atlantic Ocean. What no-one took into account was the fact that England was in a pitched naval conflict against the Hanseatic League, a trade confederation consisting of several major ports including the main port of Poland.
Paul Beneke, a Polish privateer, was patrolling the English coast and spotted the San Matteo. His status as a privateer gave him leeway to seize any cargo he wanted so long as he presented it to the Polish government. And that’s exactly what he did. He boarded the galleon before it ever left the English Channel, seizing everything on it and then presenting The Last Judgement to Saint Mary’s Church in Gdańsk, Poland.
Needless to say, the Tani family were apoplectc and the lawsuits thrown around to get the painting back to its rightful owner went on for centuries. The irony is that since the painting was stolen in the first place, many invading forces have seen the piece as fair game to steal. With Napoleon’s forces, along with Nazi Germany, helping themselves to The Last Judgement when they held Poland. However, whenever it’s liberated from looters, it always goes back to Gdańsk, where it remains to this day in the National Museum.
Yet, despite all its moving around, it’s never spent a day in the city it was commissioned to be shown in.