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How Stéphane Breitwieser stole over a billion dollars worth of art, and the sad desperate destruction that ensued [1]
['Andrew Yi']
Date: 2022-10-10
A 23-year-old Stéphane Breitwieser was overcome with cacoëthes (a mania or deep desire to do something ill advised) upon seeing this portrait painted by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, asked his girlfriend to stand watch as he pried the painting from the wall, detached the canvas from the frame & stretcher bars, rolled the painting up and walked onto the path of a serial art thief identifying as an "Art Collector." The Guardian quotes Stéphane recalling the moment like so:
"I was fascinated by her beauty, by the qualities of the woman in the portrait and by her eyes," he recalled yesterday. "I thought it was an imitation of Rembrandt."
Stéphane eventually "admitted to stealing 239 artworks and other exhibits from 172 museums" with an estimated value of $1.5 billion, simply because he didn't know how to sell his pilfered treasure, and instead hung the art in his French attic apartment while living paycheck to paycheck. Times were different back then, and it's because of art thieves like Stéphane that the current security measures are in place, but I'm sure police across 5 European countries share Vincent Vega's sentiment when he said: "Boy, I wish I could've caught him doin' it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doin' it. It-huv been worth him doin' it, just so I could've caught him doin' it."
Sadly, a desperate attempt ended in the sloppy destruction of Stéphane's billion dollar plus "collection", with some pieces lost to future viewers, scattered like the ashes of time:
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