Tuesday, March 6, 2018

March 6


An article posted by Town on Country magazine on February 28, 2018, reads:

On March 18, 1990, 13 masterpieces were stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a theft that became not only the country's largest property crime but the world's most lucrative art heist. Among the pieces that went missing were three Rembrandts, sketches by Degas, and a Vermeer that together were valued at over $500 million.  

Twenty-eight years later,  the crime remains unsolved.  See this link for the rest of the Town and Country article.  Here's a novel, published in 2012, that uses the premise that the paintings - or at least one of them - has been identified.

The Art Forger
By Barbara Shapiro

One of the most suspenseful stories Ive ever read, this book has it all: crime, passion, lessons in how to reproduce art - and good writing.  Clare Roth is an artist who's specializes in copying art - but gets way more than she bargained for when she is asked to copy a painting supposedly stolen in the 1990 Gardner Museum heist.  Subplots involve volunteer work at a boys' house of detention and a past romance gone wrong, revealed as the story unfolds.  While the characters in this story are not paragons of excellent behavior, the story is a cautionary tale.  "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive".  

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