![]() To remain in the same room for two consecutive security visits, and then commit a theft, is inadvisable. He had once worked as a museum guard, soon after graduating high school, and he understands that while almost no one will detect a detail as tiny as a missing or protruding screw, all decent guards focus on people. The security guard has already appeared three times, and Breitwieser is stressed. Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels ![]() The second screw is no easier, finally yielding as further visitors arrive, forcing him to bound off again, the pair of screws in his pocket.įowl Play: A silver chalice with an ostrich egg (1602) stolen by Breitwieser from the Art and History Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Breitwieser does not wear gloves, trading fingerprints for dexterity and touch. To unfasten the first screw amid the steady drip of tourists and guards requires ten minutes of concentrated effort, even with the margin for error shaved thin. This is how Breitwieser progresses, in fits and starts, grasshoppering about the gallery, a couple of turns of the screw, then a cough, a couple more, then another. The guard scans the gallery methodically, then turns around and is barely beneath the doorway before the theft resumes. The carving to him is a masterpiece, just ten inches tall yet dazzlingly detailed, the first humans gazing at each other as they move to embrace, the forbidden fruit picked but not bitten humanity at the precipice of sin.īreitwieser hears a soft cough–that’s Anne-Catherine–and quickly reassumes art-watching mode as a guard walks into the room. There’s only a scattered handful in the whole museum, though he has noted that each has a proper wire- occasionally, in smaller museums, they’re fake.īreitwieser digs the Swiss Army knife from his pocket, pries open a screwdriver tool, and sets to work on the plexiglass box. There are no security cameras in the area. Anne-Catherine, on lookout, hovers near the gallery’s doorway. His repertoire includes more than a dozen such poses, all meant to connote serene contemplation, even while his heart is revving with excitement and fear. Hands on hips, or arms crossed, or chin cupped. RH.K.015, COLLECTION CITY OF ANTWERP/RUBENS HOUSEĪs the tourists circle, Breitwieser positions himself in front of an oil painting and assumes an art-gazing stance. At right, Breitwieser, wearing a light disguise, staring at the ivory statue he had stolen 21 years earlier. Paradise Found: 'Adam and Eve' by Georg Petel (1627) was stolen by Stéphane Breitwieser from the Rubens House in Antwerp, Belgium. The coveted ivory was made by the celebrated German carver Georg Petel. The gallery with Adam and Eve features items Rubens collected during his lifetime, including marble busts of Roman philosophers and a scattering of Dutch and Italian oil paintings. The more popular rooms in the museum display paintings by Rubens himself, but these pieces are too large to safely steal. Even at noon there are too many of them, lingering. Except at lunchtime, when the chairs wait empty as the security staff rotates shorthanded to eat, while those who remain on duty shift from sitting to patrol, dipping in and out of rooms at a predictable pace. Most of the day, Breitwieser had observed, there is a guard in each gallery, watching from a chair. The flaw with the security guards is that they’re human. ![]() Tricky screws, sure, difficult to reach at the rear of the box, but just two. The flaw with the plexiglass box, he had noticed on his scouting visit, is that the upper part can be separated from the base by removing two screws.
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