Michelangelo: One of the real treasures here at the Courtauld, open to the public and students alike, is its prints and drawing room ... Among the most precious works in the collections are drawings by two towering figures of the Renaissance ... One of the most accomplished drawings in the Courtauld’s collection: by the mature, fifty-something Michelangelo. And this work produced around 1593 shows The Dream of Human Life. ibid.
Sandro Botticelli was a painter of cassone [marriage dowry chests], and also one of the most celebrated painters of classical myth. He was also a painter of altar-pieces too. Including this one, done in the early 1490s, when he was amongst the most prominent Florentine artists of his day, when he produced this image of the Trinity. ibid.
This work is by one of the leading Florentine painters at the beginning of the fifteenth century: Lorenzo de Monaco ... The Coronation of the Virgin Mary. ibid.
Pretty much without doubt the most illustrious British artist associated with Reynolds’s Royal Academy was Turner. And although the Courtauld don’t have any oil paintings by Turner, the do have a collection of water colours. Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 2/3
Conversion of [Saint] Paul ... A miasma of paint and energy ... The Descent of Christ ... one of the great devotional paintings in all of Western art. ibid.
The Courtauld has a handful of eighteenth-century faces, painted mainly by English but occasionally Scottish painters ... but without doubt the best for me is this one by Thomas Gainsborough: it show’s Gainsborough’s wife Margaret. ibid.
Gainsborough’s illustrious contemporary was the equally accomplished portraitist, and the founder of the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds. There are no Reynold’s work currently on show here at the Courtauld, but that is set to change. ibid.
The greatest painter of the European Enlightenment as well as one of its challengers was the great Spaniard Francisco de Goya. ibid.
Perhaps the last of the great Italian masters. ibid.
Bruegel has long been hailed as one of the leading painters of Western art. ibid.
Self-portrait [Van Gogh] ... That sense of creative intensity. Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 3/3
Monet is using his intense close scrutiny of Nature to rethink the whole notion of landscape painting ... Monet never experimented with colour for its own sake: it was always used to evoke the effects of natural light. ibid.
The Folies Bergere: This is an out and out masterpiece by Manet ... Manet is playing with the whole idea of representational code ... It’s a coherent view of an increasingly fragmenting world ... Manet never showed in the Paris exhibitions. ibid.
This painting made by Gauguin the summer of 1888 ... Haymaking ... Space and form seem simplified … ibid.
Gauguin sought inspiration further afield in the south seas in the island of Tahiti. ibid.
The Courtauld has an exceptional collection of his work ... The collection begins in the mid-1870s. ibid.
The scene that Seurat depicts is a view across the Seine ... It’s a painting that subtly but I think emphatically wrestles with the idea of modern life ... The loneliness of the human condition. ibid.
Since the 60s the Old Brewery has seen a succession of artists from the austere minimalist Carl Andre to the hardcore expressionist Tracey Emin, and the installation artist Mike Nelson who created a desert-scape in the upper gallery. (Art & Museum) Tim Marlow on Modern Art Oxford
It was the biggest art heist in American history. Half a billion dollars’ worth of paintings snatched from the walls of a Boston gallery ... That was sixteen years ago. Since then teams of FBI agents have worked on the case. Art of the Heist s1e1: The World’s Biggest Heist, 2007
Isabella Stewart became the centre of an elite artistic circle. ibid.
Two thousand five hundred art works in all. ibid.
Among the collection was The Concert by Vermeer. ibid.
None of it was insured. ibid.
The two men appear to be wearing police uniforms. ibid.
The three Rembrandts they took were priceless. One was The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. ibid.
At 2.28 a.m. after nearly an hour of plundering the thieves returned to the security desk on the ground floor with their bodies. ibid.
The thieves did not wear masks. ibid.
The thieves never ventured up to the third floor of the gallery when Titian’s Europa, the museum’s most valuable treasure, still hangs untouched. ibid.
The letter writer was never heard from again. ibid.
The Scream by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is one of the most famous and powerful images in art history. In the past twelve years it’s been the target of thieves not once but twice. Art of the Heist s1e2: The Search For the Scream
One version stolen in 1994 was recovered. But a decade later another Scream vanished when thieves walked into the Munch Museum in Oslo and ripped it from the walls along with a second masterpiece The Madonna. ibid.
August 22 2004: Two men got out and ran towards the entrance of the museum ... They brutally snatched them from the walls. ibid.
Nearly thirty years ago seven paintings, including a priceless Cézanne, were stolen from a private collection in America. Art of the Heist: Chasing Cézanne, 2007
Most mysterious of all was the identity of the man who had possession of the paintings all those hands and was finally exposed in an English courtroom. ibid.
1978 Stockbridge, Massachusetts: A bizarre story of dishonesty and double-dealing involving one of the most important paintings in the history of art. ibid.
The thieves seemed to know what they were looking for. ibid.
The request to Lloyds had come from an Englishman working in the construction business in Russia. ibid.
The people holding the paintings turned out to be a mysterious organisation called Erie International Trading Company registered in Panama. ibid.
‘This was it; he had the real thing.’ ibid. expert verifies recovery
Radcliffe had pulled off the biggest art recovery in modern art heist history. ibid.
The Cézanne went up for auction at Sotherby’s in London. ibid.
When a forgery is passed off as the real thing there are fortunes to be made and lost. For nearly a decade two Englishmen did just that. Between them they produced hundreds of modern masterpieces and plundered major art archives to fake their provenance. Their activities literally changed our history. It was one of the greatest frauds the art world has ever seen. Art of the Heist s1e4: The Forger and the Conman
John Myatt had been to art school but this was the start of a new career. ibid.
17,838. Drewe became a lucrative client and Myatt began to like him. ibid.
John Myatt had allowed himself to be trapped by John Drewe. ibid.
Drewe was presenting himself as a patron of the arts. ibid.
How many other fakes were there? And by how many artists? ibid.
As many as two hundred of them were now in circulation. ibid.
John Myatt finally decided he had had enough. ibid.
The eight years of frauds and fakes was about to come to an end. ibid.
John Myatt pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison. John Drewe maintained his innocence throughout but was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. ibid.
Of the 200 or so Myatt fakes only 72 have ever been found. ibid.
In the 1970s the black market in religious artefacts had exploded into a multi-million-dollar industry. The war-torn island of Cyprus was being picked clean. This is the story of how a sophisticated ring of smugglers ripped a sacred mosaic from the walls of a church then tried to hawk it on the open market. Little did they realise that their greed would trigger a global for its recovery that would culminate in a daring police raid which uncovered $40 million in stolen artefacts and change the trade in antiquities for ever. Art of the Heist s1e5: Den of Antiquities
The theft had all the hallmarks of a professional smuggling ring. ibid.
Inside the crates were fragments of a young Christ, Matthew, James and the archangel that had so captivated her [Peg L Goldberg]. ibid.
Judge Noland ruled that the mosaics belonged to the Church of Cyprus. ibid.
In September 2005 Alexander Lindgren, Baha Kadhum and Dieya Kadhum were arrested in a police sting operation to recover a stolen painting. All three have since had their convictions overturned by Sweden’s Supreme Court. Art of the Heist s1e6: The Big Sting, opening text
On December 22nd 2000 three of the world’s greatest art treasures were stolen from the National Museum in Stockholm. Together the Rembrandt and two Renoir paintings were valued at $50,000,000. ibid.
At five minutes to five, just as the museum is closing, three thieves armed with a sub-machine gun and two pistols burst into the gallery. They force the museum’s security staff and the remaining terrified visitors to the floor. ibid.
They have been in the gallery less than a minute. ibid.
They make for the jetty and their awaiting boat. ibid.
Two car fires occurred near the museum at the same time as the robbery. ibid.
The first thief into the museum actually bothered to buy an entrance ticket. ibid.
Security protecting these masterpieces was virtually non-existent. ibid.