Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict.
Looted art is a term often reduced to refer to artwork plundered by the Germans during World War II in Europe.[1][2][3] However, the Nazis were neither the first nor the last to loot art on a large scale. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is on record with the following quote:
| “ | "The plunder and looting of art and other treasures was not limited to the Third Reich.... The Soviet[4] and American[5] armies also participated, the former more thoroughly and systematically, the latter at the level of individuals stealing for personal gain."[6] | ” |
The Herald-Times even claims: "Napoleon was a model for Hitler in terms of art looting."[7] Bloomberg Radio also makes it clear that many of the world's greatest artworks were taken from their rightful owners.[8]
Plunder, booty, appropriation and spoliation are related terms that have been used for several hundred years[9] to describe the process of looting. Many references still associate the term looted art with the World War II period; recent legal frameworks and treaties use the term spoliation in connection with the "large number of cultural objects and works of art looted by the Nazis and others during the Second World War and the Holocaust Era from 1933–1945".[10] The term trophy art is used for the cultural objects that were taken by the Red Army and the Soviet Trophy Brigades from occupied Germany to the Soviet Union after World War II. It is a translation from the Russian Трофейное искусство.
Related terms include art theft (the stealing of valuable artifacts, mostly because of commercial reasons), illicit antiquities (covertly traded antiquities or artifacts of archaeological interest, found in illegal or unregulated excavations), provenance (the origin or source of a piece of art), and art repatriation (the process of returning artworks and antiques to their rightful owners).
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Art looting has a long history, the winning party of armed conflicts often plundering the loser, and in the absence of social order, the local population often joining in. The contents of nearly all the tombs of the Pharaohs were already completely looted by grave robbers before the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. There have been a total of seven sackings of Rome. The Old Testament includes several references to looting and to the looting of art and treasures; in the Book of Chronicles it is said: "King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem and took away the treasures of the Lord's temple and of the royal palace; he took everything, including the gold shields that Solomon had made",[14] and in the Book of Jeremiah 15:11 the Lord says: "Jerusalem, I will surely send you away for your own good. I will surely bring the enemy upon you in a time of trouble and distress ... I will give away your wealth and your treasures as plunder. I will give it away free of charge for the sins you have committed throughout your land."[15] Other famous examples include the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, the Sack of Baghdad in 1258, Hernán Cortés and the looting of the Aztec gold. In only some of these was the removal of artworks for their own sake (rather than the value of their materials for example) a primary motivation.
Since the rise of an art market for monumental sculpture, abandoned monuments all over the world have been at risk, notably in Iran, the old territories of Mesoamerican culture and Cambodia.[16]
After the looting of Europe by Napoleon, others copied the institutionalized model of systematic plunder and looting. During the American Civil War, legal frameworks and guidelines emerged that justified and legalized the plunder and looting of opposing parties and nations. Henry Wager Halleck, a United States Army officer, scholar, and lawyer argued: "No belligerent would be justifiable in destroying temples, tombs, statutes [sic], paintings, or other works of art (except so far as their destruction may be the accidental or necessary result of military operations.) But, may he not seize and appropriate to his own use such works of genius and taste as belong to the hostile state, and are of a moveable character?".[17]
In July 1862, Francis Lieber, a professor at Columbia College, who had worked with Halleck on guidelines for guerrilla warfare, was asked by Halleck, now General-in-Chief of armies of the Union, to develop a code of conduct for the armed forces. The code of conduct, published as General Orders No. 100 on April 24, 1863, signed by United States President Abraham Lincoln, later became known as the Lieber Code[9] and specifically authorized the Armies of the United States to plunder and loot the enemy – a mindset that Hitler's armies copied one century later. The Lieber Code said in Article 36: "If such works of art, libraries, collections, or instruments belonging to a hostile nation or government, can be removed without injury, the ruler of the conquering state or nation may order them to be seized and removed for the benefit of the said nation. The ultimate ownership is to be settled by the ensuing treaty of peace."[18][19] Russian and American forces relied on similar frameworks when they plundered Germany after the defeat of the Nazis.[6]
The Lieber Code further defined the conditions of looting and the relationship between private plunder and booty and institutionalized looting "All captures and booty belong, according to the modern law of war, primarily to the government of the captor." (Article 45), "Neither officers nor soldiers are allowed to make use of their position or power in the hostile country for private gain, not even for commercial transactions otherwise legitimate." (Article 46) and "... [I]f large sums are found upon the persons of prisoners, or in their possession, they shall be taken from them, and the surplus, after providing for their own support, appropriated for the use of the army, under the direction of the commander, unless otherwise ordered by the government." (Article 72)[9]
Massive art looting occurred during World War II; see art theft during World War II.
Many art pieces and artifacts from Afghanistan were looted during several wars; scores of artworks were smuggled to Britain and sold to wealthy collectors. "There are also fears that the bulk of the collection once in Kabul Museum, ... is now in smugglers' or collectors' hands. The most famous exhibits were the Begram ivories, a series of exquisite Indian panels nearly 2,000 years old, excavated by French archaeologists in the Thirties."[20] In November 2004, much of the missing collection numbering 22,513 items was found safely hidden. Over 200 crates had been moved downtown for storage at the end of the Soviet occupation including the Bactrian gold and Bagram Ivories.[21] Some 228 of these treasures, including pieces of Bactrian Gold and many of the Bagram Ivories, were exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from May 25 to September 7, 2008.[22]
Following the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 by Turkey and the occupation of the northern part of the island, churches belonging to the Cypriot Orthodox Church have been looted in what is described as "…one of the most systematic examples of the looting of art since World War II".[23] Several-high profile cases have made headline news on the international scene. Most notable was the case of the Kanakaria mosaics, 6th century AD frescos that were removed from the original church, trafficked to the USA and offered for sale to a museum for the sum of US$20,000,000.[24] These were subsequently recovered by the Orthodox Church following a court case in Indianapolis.[25]
After World War II, Germany was looted by Allied and Soviet forces; the systematic pillaging and looting by the Allies (particularly the Soviet Union) is still causing disputes and conflicts between Germany, Russia and the United States, as many of the objects that the Germans originally stole from museums, private collections and Holocaust victims have never been returned to Germany.
The Soviet plunder of Europe's art treasures[4] constituted institutionalized revenge, while the American military's role in the stealing of Europe's treasures[5] mostly involved individuals looting for personal gain.[6] The vast majority of the art taken by the allied forces from Germany was stolen by Germans from occupied countries less than a decade earlier. Irina Xorodila, the professor of Art History at the St. Petersburg University, wrote, "It is very hypocritical of Germans to demand back the art taken by Soviet troops during World War II that in the early 1940s was stolen by Germans from museums and individuals whose ashes cover Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor."
The looting of Germany by the Soviet Union was not limited to official Trophy Brigades, but included many ordinary soldiers and officials who plundered for personal reasons. At least 2.5 million artworks and 10 million books and manuscripts[27] disappeared in the Soviet Union and later in Russia, including but not limited to Gutenberg Bibles and Impressionist paintings once in German private collections. According to Time magazine, the Soviets created special "hit lists ... of what the Soviet Union wanted"[27] and followed the historical "examples" given by Napoleon, Hitler, British and American armies. Other estimates focus on German artworks and cultural treasures supposedly secured against bombing in safe places that were looted after World War II, detailing 200,000 works of art, three kilometers of archival material and three million books.[28][29] By comparison, the German army looted 375 archival institutions, 402 museums, 531 institutes, and 957 libraries in Eastern Europe alone.
Germany's collections lost 180,000 artworks, which, according to cultural experts are "being held in secret depots in Russia and Poland". The stolen artworks include sculptures by Nicola Pisano, reliefs by Donatello, Gothic Madonnas, paintings by Botticelli and Van Dyck and Baroque works rendered in stone and wood. In 2007, Germany published a catalog of missing artworks to document the extent, prevent the resale, and speed up the return of the war booty.[30] Berlin's State Museum alone lost around 400 artworks during World War II. The German state (Land) of Saxony-Anhalt still maintains a list entitled Beutekunst ("Looted Art") of more than 1000 missing paintings and books believed confiscated by the US or the Soviet Union.
Poland is also in possession of some collections that Germany evacuated to remote places in Eastern Germany (occupied Poland or Regained Territories). Among those there is a large collection from Berlin, which in Polish referred to as Berlinka. Another notable collection in Polish possession is Hermann Goering's collection of 25 historic airplanes (Deutsche Luftfahrt Sammlung) – ironically, it contains two Polish planes captured by Germans during their invasion of Poland (including a PZL P-11c of Army Kraków).[31] Poland refuses to return those collections to Germany unless Germany returns some of the collections looted in Poland and still in its possession in exchange.[31]
Entire libraries and archives with files from all over Europe were looted and their files taken to Russia by the Soviet Trophy Brigades. The Russian State Military Archive (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvenni Voennyi Arkhiv- RGVA) still contains a large number of files of foreign origin, including papers relating to Jewish organisations.[32]
Berlin's Gemäldegalerie at Friedrichshain lost 441 major paintings, among them seven works by Peter Paul Rubens, three Caravaggios and three Van Dycks. The looted artworks might still be in "secret depositories ... in Moscow and St Petersburg".[33] Veteran BBC foreign correspondent Charles Wheeler, then Berlin correspondent of the BBC's German Service, received a small painting as a wedding present in 1952 from an East German farmer, given in return for some potatoes. The portrait of Eleonora of Toledo (1522–1562), the daughter of the Neapolitan viceroy and wife of the first Duke of Florence, Cosimo di Medici I, which he found from the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, had been looted from the Gemäldegalerie. The gallery had photographed the picture by Alessandro Allori (1535–1607) before closing down and, in 1939, putting its collection in secure storage areas, which Soviet troops broke into at the war's end. Wheeler covered the process in It's My Story: Looted Art for BBC Radio 4, contacting the Commission for Looted Art, the identification of the painting's rightful owner in Germany and the hand-over in Berlin. On May 31, 2006, the commission, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, representing the Berlin state museums, announced the return of the painting.[33][34]
The Eberswalde Gold Treasures and German Merovingian Art Treasures were taken from Berlin to Soviet Russia.
British troops and the Naval War Trophies Committee also looted artworks from Germany, including several pictures by marine artist Claus Bergen ("Wreath in the North Sea in Memory of the Battle of Jutland", "The Commander U-boat", "Admiral Hipper's Battle Cruiser at Jutland" and "The German Pocket Battleship Admiral Von Scheer Bombarding the Spanish Coast"), Carl Saltzmann ("German Fleet Manoeuvres on the High Seas") and Ehrhard ("Before the Hurricane at Apia Samoa" and "During the Hurricane at Apia").[35] The pictures were looted from the Mürwik Naval Academy at Flensburg, as documented by a 1965–66 Ministry of defense file in the UK National Archives. The trophies were sent to British museums, five remain in the National Maritime Museum in London (NMM),[36] and one picture ("Before the Hurricane at Apia") was lent to HMS Calliope in 1959, lost, and formally written off in 1979. The National Maritime Museum admitted in January 2007 that "the documentation at the NMM and the National Archives is not complete"; according to spoliation guidelines, the pictures should be regarded as having been "wrongly taken".[8][35]
On 25 August 1955, the Soviet functionaries handed over to the representatives of East Germany 1240 paintings from the Dresden Gallery, including the Sistine Madonna and Sleeping Venus, which had been "saved and restored" by the Soviets after the Battle of Berlin.[38] According to Irina Antonova, "a cultural bureaucrat in the traditional Soviet style"[27] and Director of the Pushkin Museum, more than 1,500,000 items of cultural value (including the frieze reliefs of the Pergamon Altar and the Grünes Gewölbe treasures) were restituted to German museums at the behest of the Soviet government in the 1950s and 1960s. "We have not received anything in return," Antonova observed in 1999.[39]
The reasons for the Soviet looting of Germany and the subsequent Russian attempts are revealed in an interview that Irina Antonova gave to the German Die Welt newspaper; the interview specifically focuses on the Russian notion of looting, using the historical example of Napoleon as a direct reference for the Russian justification of the Plunder of Germany: "Three quarters of all the Italian art in the Louvre came to Paris with Napoleon. We all know this, yet the works remain in the Louvre. I know the place where Veronese's large painting used to hang in the monastery of Vicenza. Now it's in the Louvre where it will stay. It's the same with the Elgin Marbles in London. That's just the way it is."[40]
At the 1998 conference, Eizenstat was "impressed ... almost overwhelmed" when Boris Yeltsin's government promised "to identify and return art that was looted by the Nazis and then plundered by Stalin's troops as 'reparations' for Germany's wartime assault."[41] Alarmed by these negotiations, the State Duma of the Russian Federation promulgated a law (15 April 1998) whereby "the cultural valuables translocated to the USSR after World War II" were declared national patrimony of the Russian Federation and each occasion of their alienation was to be sanctioned by the Russian parliament.[42] The preamble to the law classifies the remaining valuables, such as Priam's Treasure, as a compensation for "the unprecedented nature of Germany's war crimes" and irreparable damage inflicted by the German invaders on Russian cultural heritage during the war.[43]
Following the law adopted by the State Duma on 17 April 2002, the Hermitage Museum returned to Frankfurt an der Oder the looted medieval stained-glass windows of the Marienkirche; six of the 117 individual pieces, however, still remain missing. Andrei Vorobiev, the former Academic Secretary of the Museum, confirmed in 2005 the assumption that they are still in Russia (in the Pushkin Museum.)[44] According to the Hermitage, "As a gesture in return, the German company Wintershall paid for the restoration of a church destroyed during the Second World War, Novgorod's Church of the Assumption on Volotovoe Pole".[44] In addition, the Hermitage did demand and receive a compensation of USD 400,000 for "restoring and exhibiting the windows".[44]
A Silver collection consisting of 18 pieces was plundered from the NKVD after World War II from the German Prince of Anhalt, who suffered under both the Nazis and Bolsheviks alike, before he was posthumously rehabilitated. In a so-called "good will gesture", the collection was returned to the descendants of the Prince by the Ministry of Culture even though the Russian prosecutor originally refused the request of the children of the rehabilitated prince.[47]
Lev Bezymenski, a Russian officer and translator who became a controversial historian and professor at Moscow's military academy,[48] died on June 26, 2007, at age 86 in Moscow. He was a military intelligence officer of the 1st Belorussian Front under Marshal Georgy Zhukov, participated in the interrogation of German Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich Paulus, and translated the message confirming Adolf Hitler's death for Stalin. After the Red Army captured Berlin in 1945, he investigated Adolf Hitler's death and headquarters. In his many articles and books (Bezymenski, L. Stalin and Hitler (2002), Bezymenski, L. (1968). The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives. Harcourt Brace. ISBN 0-7181-0634-2), he failed to mention that he looted several containers filled with around 100 gramophone records from the Reich Chancellery, recordings performed by the best orchestras of Europe and Germany with the best soloists of the age.[49][50][51] The collection stolen by Bezymenski, who himself was Jewish,[48] included many Russian and Jewish artists. Bezymenski brought the looted collection of the Führer's favourite discs to Moscow, where he felt "guilty about his larceny and hid the records in an attic, where his daughter, Alexandra Besymenskaja, discovered them by accident in 1991."[48][52] Bezymenski understood the political implications of his actions and "kept quiet about the records during his lifetime for fear that he would be accused of looting." [53] The collection still remains in Russia.
In another high-profile case, Viktor Baldin, who served as a front-line soldier and Soviet army captain in World War II and later directed the Shusev State Scientific Research Museum of Architecture in Moscow, stole 362 drawings and two small paintings on May 29, 1945, from the Kunsthalle in Bremen,[54] which the Russian Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi estimates at USD 1.5 billion.[55][56] From the entire collection of the Kunsthalle, more than 1,500 artworks are still missing;[57] in 1991 and 1997, the Kunsthalle published printed catalogues of the works of art from the lost during the evacuation in the Second World War.[58]
Baldin claims that he protected the collection of works from Corot, Delacroix, Degas, Dürer, Van Gogh, Goya, Manet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rodin, Rubens, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Titian after his engineers and sappers' unit from the 38. Soviet Army had requisitioned and plundered the storage place, the hunting lodge Karnzow Castle, at Kyritz, north of Berlin in Germany.[47][54][55][59] Baldin traded personal items to keep the collection together[54] and hid the artworks after the war at his home until he gave it to the Shusev State Scientific Research Museum of Architecture before the collection was hurriedly transferred to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 1991 in a cover-up attempt[47] (and where it was exhibited in 1993). Baldin tried for several decades to give the stolen art back to Germany; he even wrote to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1973 and to many Soviet political and cultural officials including Mikhail Suslov, as well as Raisa and Mikhail Gorbachev – to no avail,[55] until 1990, when it seemed that the art pieces could return to their rightful owner.[60] According to Wolfgang Eichwede, an art expert and history professor at Bremen University, in a gesture of reconciliation, 101 pieces, including Albrecht Duerers' 1494 watercolor View of a Rock Castle by a River, were returned in 2000, following the simultaneous return of two artifacts of the Amber Chamber, bought and financed by a German merchant from Bremen to speed their return to Russia.[61] The history of the stolen paintings and the odyssey of partial return back to Bremen is featured in the 2007 book Victor Baldin – The Man with the Suitcase/Victor Baldin – Der Mann mit dem Koffer.[62]
The Russian Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy even confirmed in 2003 the Russian General Prosecutor's orders concerning the resolution of the Hanse Supreme court deciding that the entire 364 remaining items are property of the Bremen Kunsthalle.[63] The former culture minister Mikhail Shvydkoy supported the return of the looted art to Germany, but faced opposition from nationalist leaders, including Communist legislator and former Culture Minister Nikolai Gubenko.[55] Nikolai Gubenko was already involved in the Russian attempt to hide the Baldin collection in 1991 when the collection was "hurriedly transferred to the assets of the Ministry of Culture" (led by Gubenko).[47] The State Duma, including Gubenko as a member of the Duma,[54] on March 12, 2003, even passed a nonbinding resolution asking President Putin to prevent the Culture Ministry from returning to Germany the Baldin Collection,[64] even though the artworks were clearly stolen by an individual and thus not covered by the Russian Trophy Art law. Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoy opposed these nationalistic attempts: "In all spheres, the war is over for us. We're already friendly with Germans, we marry them, we dream of traveling there and they here ... But for some reason, there's a terrible war going on for culture."[55] Shvydkoy and the German Minister of Culture (Kulturstaatsministerin) Christina Weiss even signed an agreement that 20 pieces of the Baldin ensemble will remain in Russia.[65] Mikhail Shvydkoy has later received an official warning and reprimand and was threatened by deputy prosecutor Vladimir Kolsenikov with criminal charges if he would return the art collection to Germany.[59] Anatoly Vilkov, from the Russian ministry of culture and mass communications, stated that "Russia has no right to keep the Baldin collection. We did not receive this right through a gift, since by law the collection did not belong to the donor Baldin", but in 2005, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Sokolov, Russia's minister of culture and mass communications, contradicted several statements and promises given before and opposed the return of the so-called Baldin collection to Germany.
According to an interview given by his wife Julia Siwakowa, it was Victor Baldin's last will that the looted art be returned to the Kunsthalle: "The collection belongs to human mankind, not only Germany, but the collection was located at the Kunsthalle Bremen, and she must be returned to this place."[54] While the Allied committees restored the art to its rightful owners as "fast as possible after the war, ... the Russians refused to"[27] – until now the stolen artwork remains in Russia.[47]
More recently, the term is used to describe the looting in Iraq after the American-led invasion,[66] including, but not limited to, the National Museum of Iraq.[67] Following the looting by Iraqi nationals during the chaos of war, the British and American troops were accused[67] of not preventing the pillaging of Iraq's heritage by local citizens. The liberation forces were involved in heavy battles with not enough troops to protect the National Museum and Library in Baghdad from local thieves.[66] The troops were criticized by archeologists: "American officials came under sharp criticism from archaeologists and others for not securing the museum, a vast storehouse of artifacts from some of civilization's first cities."[68][69]
After the U.S. troops entered Baghdad on April 9, 2003, at least 13,000 artifacts were stolen by Iraqi thieves during the looting,[70] including many moved from other sites into the National Museum for safekeeping. U.S. troops and tanks were stationed in that area but, without orders to stop the looting, "watched for several days before moving against the thieves."[70] Sargent Jackson of the 1st Marine Battalion explained that "...our orders were to avoid engaging religious Muslims who were unarmed. So when groups of Imams demanded to remove religious items to prevent them from being defiled by the infidels, how were we supposed to know that they were thieves? Our captain didn't want to create an international incident by arresting religious leaders."
The Boston Globe writes: "Armies not of fighters but of looters, capitalizing on a security vacuum after war, have pillaged Babylon." Donny George, the curator of Iraq's National Museum says about the art looting:
| “ | "It's the crime of the century because it affects the heritage of all mankind." [71] | ” |
George's comments followed widespread reporting that 100 percent of the museum's 170,000 inventoried lots (about 501,000 pieces) had been removed by looters. In fact, about 95 percent of the museum's contents never left the museum. According to investigators of the thefts, about two percent of the museum pieces were stored elsewhere for safekeeping. Another two percent were stolen, in an apparent "inside job", just before U.S. troops arrived; about one percent, or about 5,000 items, were taken by outside looters. Most of the looted items were tiny beads and amulets.
The horror of art looting in general is made clear by Hashem Hama Abdoulah, director of the museum of antiquities in Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdish-controlled zone of northern Iraq.
| “ | "When your history is stolen from you, you lose your sense of that history. Not just the Iraqi people, but all of civilization that can trace its roots back to this area."[71] | ” |
Many other looted art objects ended up in black markets with rich art collectors and art dealers, mostly in the United States, Great Britain,[69] Italy[69] and Syria;[69] in 2006, the Netherlands returned to Iraqi authorities three clay tablets that it believed had been stolen from the museum.[69] One of the most valuable artifacts looted during the plunder of the National Museum of Iraq, a headless stone statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash, was recovered in the United States with the help of Hicham Aboutaam, an art dealer in New York. Thousands of smaller pieces have remained in Iraq or been returned by other countries, including Italy and the Netherlands.
Some of the artifacts have been recovered,[72] custom officials in the United States intercepted at least 1,000 pieces, but many are still advertised on eBay or are available through known collectors and black markets. "U.S. troops, journalists and contractors returning from Iraq are among those who have been caught with forbidden souvenirs."[73] The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs maintains a list and image gallery of looted artworks from Iraq at the Iraq Cultural Property Image Collection.[74]
Despite public announcements and temporary efforts by the Iraqi and American administrations, the situation in Iraqi Museums and archaeological sites did not improve. Donny George, the curator of Iraq's National Museum, the first person who raised his voice and alarmed the world about the looting in Iraq after the American invasion and publicly stated his opinion about the "ongoing failure of Iraqi leaders and the American military to protect the sites",[70] left the country and resigned in August 2006. Before he left, he closed and sealed the museum and plugged the doors with concrete.[70] In an article in Newsweek, he even said that the stolen items should not be returned to Iraq under the given circumstances: "We believe this is not the right time now to have them back. Since we know all about them and are promised them back whenever we want them, it is better to keep them in these countries."[75]
The looting of Italian art was not limited to Napoleon alone; Italian criminals have long been, and remain, extremely active in the field, and Italy's battle to recover the antiquities it says were looted from the country and sold to museums and art collectors worldwide is still ongoing. The Italian government and the Art Squad of the Carabinieri, Italy's national police force, made special efforts to "[crack] the network of looters, smugglers, and dealers supplying American museums," collecting "mountains of evidence—thousands of antiquities, photographs, and documents—seized from looters and dealers in a series of dramatic raids." According to the BBC, Italian authorities have for several years insisted on the return of stolen or looted artworks from wealthy museums and collectors, particularly in America.[76] Italy is demanding the return of the looted art and antiquities from many famous American institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Princeton Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the private collection of the Leon Levy and his wife, Shelby White.[77]
In an interview with Archaeology, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, investigative journalist Peter Watson wrote in June 2006 that according to the Italian public prosecutor Paolo Ferri, 100,000 tombs have been looted in Italy alone, representing a value of US$500 million. He estimates that the overall monetary value of looted art, including Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, West Africa, Central America, Peru, and China, is at least four times the Italian figure.[78] Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini authored The Medici Conspiracy, a book that uncovers the connection between looted art, the art and antiquities markets, auction houses, and museums.[78]
In 2007, the Los Angeles J. Paul Getty Museum, at the center of allegations by Italian officials about the pillaging of cultural artifacts from the country and other controversies,[79] was forced to return 40 artifacts, including a 5th-century BC statue of the goddess Aphrodite, which was looted from Morgantina, an ancient Greek settlement in Sicily.[80][81] The Getty acquired the statue in 1988 for $18 million USD[81] from an anonymous collector fully aware about the controversy focusing on the unclear provenance and origin.[82][83][84][85] The Getty Museum resisted the requests of the Italian government for nearly two decades, only to admit later that "there might be 'problems' attached to the acquisition."[86] In 2006, Italian senior cultural official Giuseppe Proietti said: "The negotiations haven't made a single step forward", only after he suggested the Italian government "to take cultural sanctions against the Getty, suspending all cultural cooperation,"[87] did the J. Paul Getty Museum return the antiquities. According to the New York Times, the Getty Museum confirmed in May 2007 that the statue "most likely comes from Italy."[81]
Similar disputes about stolen and looted art have also involved the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which was forced to return a set of 16 silver pieces from the 3rd century BC, illegally excavated from Morgantina, Italy.[86] In 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art relinquished ownership of a 2,500-year-old Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater, a krater painted by Euphronios, stolen from an Etruscan tomb and smuggled from Italy, 15 pieces of Sicilian silver and four ancient vessels in exchange for long-term loans of other prized antiquities. According to the New York Times, the case, "of its kind, perhaps second only to the dispute between Greece and Great Britain over the Elgin marbles," "became emblematic of the ethical questions surrounding the acquisition of ancient art by major museums."[88]
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was forced to return 34 stolen artifacts – including Hellenistic silverware, Etruscan vases and Roman statues. The aforementioned institutions have agreed to hand over the artworks in exchange for loans of other treasures. Former curator of the Getty Museum Marion True and art dealer Robert Hecht are currently on trial in Rome; Italy accuses them of buying and trafficking stolen and illicit artworks (including the Aphrodite statue).[80][81][89] Evidence against both emerged in a 1995 raid of a Geneva, Switzerland, warehouse that contained many stolen artifacts.
The warehouses were registered to a Swiss company called Editions Services, which police traced to an Italian art dealer, Giacomo Medici. The Carabinieri stated that the warehouses contained 10,000 artifacts worth 50 billion lire (about $35 million).[90] In 1997, Giacomo Medici was arrested; his operation is believed to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market."[91] Medici was sentenced in 2004 by a Rome court to ten years in prison and a fine of 10 million euros, "the largest penalty ever meted out for antiquities crime in Italy."[91]
In another, unrelated case in 1999, the Getty Museum had to hand over three antiquities to Italy after determining they were stolen. The objects included a Greek red-figure kylix from the 5th century BC signed by the painter, Onesimos, and the potter, Euphronios, looted from the Etruscan site of Cerveteri; a torso of the god Mithra from the 2nd century AD; and the head of a youth by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos.[92] According to the New York Times, the Getty Museum refused for several years to return the antiquities to their rightful owners.[76][93]
Yet another case emerged in 2007, when Italy's art-theft investigation squad discovered a hidden cache of ancient marble carvings depicting early gladiators, the lower portion of a marble statue of a man in a toga and a piece of a column. Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli used the case to underline the importance of these artifacts for Italy.[94]
The Załuski Library, the first public library in Poland, was founded by two brothers, Józef Andrzej Załuski, crown referendary and bishop of Kiev, and Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, crown chancellor and bishop of Cracow. The library was considered one of the most important libraries of the world, featuring a collection of about 400,000 printed items, manuscripts, artworks, scientific instruments, and plant and animal specimens. Located in Warsaw's Daniłowiczowski Palace, it was looted in the aftermath of the second Partition of Poland and Kościuszko Uprising in 1794 by Russian troops on orders from Russian Czarina Catherine II; the stolen artworks were transported to St. Petersburg and became part of the Russian Imperial Library, which was founded one year later. Although some pieces were returned by the Soviet Union in 1921 and were burned during the Warsaw Uprising against German forces, other parts of the collection have still not been returned by Russia. Polish scientists have been allowed to access and study the objects.[98]
Polish Crown Jewels were removed by the Prussians in 1795 after the Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[99]
After the collapse of the November Uprising, literary and art treasures were removed from Poland.[100] Poland regained some of the artefacts after the Treaty of Riga, comprising the furnishings of the Warsaw Castle and the Wawel Castle.[101][102]
During the Second World War, Germany tried to destroy Poland completely and exterminate its population as well as culture. Countless art objects were looted, as Germany systematically carried out a plan of looting prepared even before the start of hostilities (see also Nazi plunder).[103] Twenty-five museums and many other facilities were destroyed.[103] The total cost of German theft and destruction of Polish art is estimated at 20 billion dollars,[31] or an estimated 43% of Polish cultural heritage; over 516,000 individual art pieces were looted (including 2,800 paintings by European painters; 11,000 paintings by Polish painters; 1,400 sculptures, 75,000 manuscripts, 25,000 maps, 90,000 books including over 20,000 printed before 1800, and hundreds of thousands of other items of artistic and historical value).[103] Soviet troops afterward contributed to the plunder as well.[104]
The transformation of theft and plunder as an incentive for troops to institutionalized, indiscriminate looting following military conflict can be observed in the wake of British conquest in Asia, Africa and India. The looting of artifacts for "both personal and institutional reasons" became "increasingly important in the process of "othering" Oriental and African societies and was exemplified in the professionalism of exploration and the growth of ethnographic departments in museums, the new 'temples of Empire'." Looting, not necessarily of art, became a vital instrument for the projection of power and the British imperial desire to gather and provide information about the "exotic" cultures and primitive tribes.[105][106]
Napoleon's conquests in Europe were followed by a systematic attempt, later more tentatively echoed by Hitler, to take the finest works of art of conquered nations back to the Louvre in Paris for a grand central museum of all Europe. Napoleon boasted:
| “ | "We will now have all that is beautiful in Italy except for a few objects in Turin and Naples."[107] | ” |
Many works were returned after his fall, but many others were not, and remain in France. Many works confiscated from religious institutions under the French occupation now form the backbone of national museums: "Napoleon's art-loot depots became the foundation of Venice's Accademia, Milan's Brera galleries. His brother Louis founded Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum; brother Joseph started Madrid's Prado" (for the Spanish royal collection).[107]
Napoleonic commander and Marechal Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult stole in 1810 six large pictures painted by Murillo in 1668 for the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville. One painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington; a second looted painting, The Healing of the Paralytic, is in the National Gallery in London; only two of the original paintings have returned to Seville.[8]
Another French general looted several pictures, including four Claudes and Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross, from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1806. The stolen goods were later bought by the Empress Josephine and subsequently by the tsar. Since 1918, when the Bolshevik government signed a peace treaty with Germany and Austria, have German negotiators demanded the return of the paintings. Russia refused to return the stolen goods; the pictures still remain in the Hermitage.[8]
During World War II, the Nazis set up special departments "for a limited time for the seizure and securing of objects of cultural value",[108] especially in the Occupied Eastern Territories, including the Baltic states, Ukraine, Hungary and Greece. The Russian imperial residences around St. Petersburg were thoroughly looted and deliberately blown up, so that their restoration is still under way. The Catherine Palace and Peterhof were reduced to smoldering ruins; among the innumerable trophies was the world-famous Amber Room.[109] Medieval churches of Novgorod and Pskov, with their unique 12th-century frescoes, were systematically plundered and reduced to piles of rubble. Major museums around Moscow, including Yasnaya Polyana, Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery, and New Jerusalem, faced a similar fate, with their architectural integrity irrevocably impaired.
The legal framework and the language of the instructions used by Germany resembles the Lieber Code, but in the Nuremberg Trial proceedings, the victorious Allied armies applied different standards and sentenced the Nazis involved as war criminals. Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, detailing the Jurisdiction and General Principles, declares the "plunder of public or private property" a war crime,[110] while the Lieber Code and the actions of the Allied armies in the aftermath of World War II allowed or tolerated the looting. The main objective of the looting is made clear by Dr. Muhlmann, responsible for the securing of all Polish art treasures: "I confirm that the art treasures ... would not have remained in Poland in case of a German victory, but they would have been used to complement German artistic property."[111]
One inventory of 39 volumes featuring the looted art and antiques, prepared by the Nazis and discussed during the Nuremberg trials, lists "21,903 Works of Art: 5,281 paintings, pastels, water colors, drawings; 684 miniatures, glass and enamel paintings, illuminated books and manuscripts; 583 sculptures, terra cottas, medallions, and plaques; 2,477 articles of furniture of art historical value; 583 textiles (tapestries, rugs, embroideries, Coptic textiles); 5,825 objects of decorative art (porcelains, bronzes, faience, majolica, ceramics, jewelry, coins, art objects with precious stones); 1,286 East Asiatic art works (bronzes, sculpture, porcelains, paintings, folding screens, weapons); 259 art works of antiquity (sculptures, bronzes, vases, jewelry, bowls, engraved gems, terracottas)."[111]
When Allied forces bombed Germany's cities and historic institutions, Germany "began storing the artworks in salt mines and caves for protection from Allied bombing raids. These mines and caves offered the appropriate humidity and temperature conditions for artworks."[112]
The Soviet Union engaged in systematic looting during World War II, particularly of Germany – seeing this as reparations for damage and looting done by Germany in the Soviet Union.[28][113] The Soviets also looted other occupied territories; for example, looting by Soviets was common on the territories theoretically assigned to its ally, the communist Poland.[114][115] Even Polish Communists were uneasy, as in 1945, the future Chairman of the Polish Council of State, Aleksander Zawadzki, worried that "raping and looting of the Soviet army would provoke a civil war."[116] Soviet forces had engaged in plunder on Recovered Territories that were to be transferred to Poland, stripping it of anything of value.[117][118] A recently recovered masterwork is Gustave Courbet's Femme nue couchée, looted in Budapest, Hungary, in 1945.
The conquistadors looting Latin and South America became one of the most commonly recognized plunders in the world.
Roger Atwood writes in Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World: "Mayan stonework became one of those things that good art museums in America just had to have, and looters in the jungles of southern Mexico and Guatemala worked overtime to meet the demand."[119][120] [121][122]
Looting in Mesoamerica has a long tradition and history, many graves are looted before the archaeologists could reach them, and the artifacts are then sold to wealthy collectors in the United States, Japan or Europe. Guillermo Cock, a Lima-based archaeologist, says about a recent find of dozens of exquisitely preserved Inca mummies on the outskirts of Peru's capital city, Lima: "The true problem is the looters," he said. "If we leave the cemetery it is going to be destroyed in a few weeks."[123]