Louvre Jewel Heist
- History Fix Podcast
- 2 hours ago
- 25 min read
Episode 137: The Historical Side of the $102 Million Worth of Jewels Stolen From the Louvre
Listen:
Watch:
Transcript:
Two weeks ago on Sunday, October 19th something rather extraordinary happened at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. During broad daylight, thirty minutes after the museum opened for the day, and as hundreds of visitors streamed inside, 8 pieces of France’s crown jewel collection valued at an estimated 102 million dollars but actually priceless when considering historical value, were stolen in less than 8 minutes. I don’t often cover current events on this show, I’m usually covering events centuries after they happened, but this one deals with history and it deals with history that I now find myself unable to stop thinking about. My mind races back to the Mona Lisa episode and the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, how that was possible. How this was possible. It fixates on the pieces themselves, these extravagant ostentatious manifestations of the wealth of the elite. Who were these women who sported such opulence? What gave them that right? And it gets stuck, my mind, it gets stuck on another question that not enough people seem to be asking. Where did these gems come from originally? I promise you they didn’t come from France. So where did they come from and at whose expense? And, possibly the question that haunts me the most, can you really steal something that was already stolen? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and this is History Fix where I discuss surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I know you guys don’t come to me for current events but we can’t not talk about this. Plus, there’s a lot of history to discuss here too and there’s a lot of deep ethical questions that we need to ask ourselves concerning that history. So we’re going to get a little philosophical today but we’re also going to talk about a jewel heist and a bunch of princesses so this is, yeah this is a good one. Let’s talk about the heist itself first because I can’t get enough. I brought it up to my husband Joey soon after it happened. I was like “you hear about this Louvre jewel heist?” Cause we went to the Louvre on our honeymoon, we have these shared memories there. It’s something I thought he might find at least a little bit interesting even though he hates the news and history. He was like “yeah, heard about it, haven’t really read up on it,” that kind of thing. So I filled him in a little bit cause y’all know I read up on it hard. And you want to know what he said? The first thing he said? “Good for them.” Leave it to Joey. Now, we don’t know who these thieves were. We don’t know why they stole the jewelry. That sentiment might be, is probably dead wrong, but I appreciate how Joey always leaves room for alternate perspectives. And he might actually not be too out of line here.
So what happened? Well, at 9:30 am, the morning of Sunday, October 19th, a utility truck of sorts with an extendible ladder and a mechanized lift, what you might call a cherry picker, drove up to a second story window of the Louvre Museum in Paris 30 minutes after the museum opened for the day. Now this isn’t crazy out of the ordinary. This wouldn’t have looked crazy to passerbys. This looks like a maintenance truck doing maintenance on the very old windows or something. Sort of a thing you’d expect to see. And it’s such a large operation, you have to understand, the museum itself is massive. It’s absolutely massive. It’s such a large operation and there are so many people involved, so many moving parts, no one knows all the things. No one person can possibly know all the things going on with the museum when there’s scheduled maintenance where and when. Everyone knows their little piece, the part they need to turn their cog. So everyone is just like, oh yeah maintenance truck, old windows, duh. Right? So they drive up, they park under this window which happens to be the window to the Gallery of Apollo where France’s crown jewels are on display. There’s four total guys we think. Two of the guys who we’re pretty sure were wearing like neon vests, think like a vest you’d wear if you’re doing road work or directing traffic or something. So they’re not hiding. They are literally wearing neon. But they’re trying to look like they’re supposed to be there. Now, they do have their faces covered. They have balaclavas on, covering their faces but that kind of makes sense considering their going to be using power tools. They go up the ladder lift thing with these power tools. They have angle grinders which, according to Andrew Chang in a video for CBS News can cut through virtually anything depending on what kind of cutting disk you use. These two guys use these to cut through the window into the Gallery of Apollo. They cut out the pane of glass and climb through into the gallery. Now, this is crazy to me because the museum is open. There were likely people in that gallery at the time. Which, can you imagine? But you know, the neon vests. Thieves don’t wear neon vests. Maintenance men wear neon vests. So I imagine even then people were just kind of like “oh weird, I guess they’re replacing the window today. Didn’t think they’d do that while the museum was open.” You know, your brain is always trying to make sense of things. And we’re always trying to go with the most logical explanation. Breaking into the crown jewel room at the Louvre with angle grinders in broad daylight in 2025 is not a logical explanation. But it’s what was happening.
So they climb through into the gallery. According to BBC, there were guards in the room and the guards did react but, threatened with the angle grinders, there really wasn’t anything they could do. And this initially confused me so much because I thought museum guards were basically police officers. Nope. Not at all. The security guards inside the Louvre are unarmed civilian employees. Their job is to monitor the galleries, make sure there’s no funny business, no one’s doing anything cray cray, and trigger alarms if something is going down. They watch, they trigger alarms, they help guests evacuate the museum safely if necessary. They don’t have guns or tasers or even little police beaty sticks, batons, whatever. They are completely unarmed. There are armed policemen outside of the museum but none are stationed full time inside the museum. And you might be thinking, well if the security guards just had guns, this never would have happened. And honestly that’s probably a very American way of thinking. People from less gun happy countries listening right now are probably like “um, no that’s not what I was thinking.” The reason the museum security guards don’t have guns is because human lives are more important than artwork and historical artifacts. If the guards were to have confronted these thieves with their guns it probably would have led to a shoot out in a crowded public place which is not ideal. And because of that risk French labor laws and insurance regulations prohibit the security guards from having guns. Their job is to trigger alarms and get the visitors out. Then they wait for the actually armed police officers to rush in and do their thing. The problem here is that this happened so fast and the Louvre is so dang big that by the time the police officers arrived, the thieves were long gone.
So they come in through the window. Alarms are likely already going off at this point. The guards are just getting everyone out, yes, letting it happen. They can’t do anything to stop it nor are they supposed to. The two thieves then use the angle grinders to cut out the glass in the display cases and remove 9 pieces of jewelry and regalia from the crown jewels collection, we’ll get into those in more detail soon. They are inside for four minutes total. Then they head back out the window, down the ladder, and escape on motorbikes. The whole thing from first pulling up in the truck to escaping on the motorbikes took less than 8 minutes total. Now they can’t escape in the truck obviously cause that’s way too noticeable, hence the motorbikes. They do actually take a minute to try to set fire to the truck probably just to destroy any kind of forensic evidence that might be in the truck.
Now, after they leave, the police rush in, the guards, the museum guys, rush in. The museum’s closed, everybody’s been kicked out. They go assess the damage. They find that 9 pieces are missing from their cases. But, they find one of them near the lift truck that the thief had either dropped or intentionally discarded on his way out, probably dropped. It’s this crown with 8 golden eagles, 56 emeralds and over 1,300 diamonds. It’s actually the most valuable of what was stolen. It’s not the most valuable in the collection though. That’s the Regent Diamond worth over $60 million which was not stolen. So that’s interesting. But anyway, the thieves appear to have dropped this crown, their most valuable spoil, as they were making their getaway and it was recovered. It was damaged but it was recovered. The other 8 pieces appear to have been successfully stolen. We’ll talk about them soon but first I just want to compare this heist with the stealing of the Mona Lisa back in 1911 because they’re both just so far fetched and yet seem to have been pulled off way too easily.
So if you listened to episode 43 about the Mona Lisa, highly recommend, I talked about when the Mona Lisa, arguably the most famous piece of artwork in existence, a renaissance painting by Leonardo da Vinci, was successfully stolen by an Italian maintenance man named Vincenzo Peruggia. Now, Peruggia used to work in the Louvre. He used to do maintenance there. He knew the museum well. He knew how to get around. He knew how security worked. He knew about the hours and when people would be where. And he used all of that to his advantage. He goes on a Monday, which he knows is a cleaning day and the museum’s closed. Plus he knows there’s only 12 guards on duty instead of the usual 160. He acts like he’s there to clean the museum. Maintenance man. Familiar? It’s basically the same MO the jewel thieves used. He walks straight to the gallery where the Mona Lisa was hanging and popped it off the wall. That’s how easy it was. He ends up hiding it under his painter's smock and then hops on a bus. And it’s not like a canvas that he could roll up; it's painted on a wooden panel. It’s a rectangle. It’s not very big but it’s hard and rectangular. He hops on a bus, the wrong bus actually, gets off, gets in a horse drawn carriage and takes her on home. So we have some similarities here. Now the museum was closed when Peruggia did this, it was opened during the jewel heist. But both thieves pretended that they were supposed to be there. They didn’t sneak in in all black and hide in the shadows and hope not to be seen. They expected to be seen and they dressed accordingly. What would someone who was actually allowed to do this look like? What would they be wearing? A smock. A yellow vest. Guys, not trying to tell you how to rob a museum or anything, but the best way to get away with literally anything, is to pretend like you’re supposed to be doing it. Confidence baby. Very few people question that kind of confidence. We’re going to come back to Peruggia’s motives for stealing the Mona Lisa because I find them very interesting and insightful but first let’s look at what the jewel thieves stole and specifically at the historical significance of these 8 pieces. The Mona Lisa, by the way, I’m assuming everyone knows but in case you’re like googling frantically right now, the Mona Lisa was, amazingly, recovered two years later in 1913 and was returned to the Louvre where it remains on display today but much better protected… I mean I guess? I thought so anyway?
Okay back to the jewelry heist. Let’s start with the emerald pieces because I’m going to go chronologically here. Quick side note as I try to explain who wore this jewelry and when, the French line of succession is crazy confusing mostly thanks to the French Revolution and the political chaos that plagued the decades that followed. There is so much upheaval but I’m going to try to walk you through that nice and easy, don’t worry. Also, sorry again about the horrible French pronunciation. My mouth just can’t do it. And also, real quick, it’s come to my attention that I upset some folks with some of my jokes about the French language in the Gilles de Rais episode. So sorry, for real, not my intention. I was genuinely only joking. French is obviously like the most beautiful language. Jokes only. Jokes and love. Love y’all. So the emerald pieces that were stolen included a necklace and matching earrings. This isn’t like a quaint little necklace with a little emerald bauble on it. This is a chonky monster of a thing dripping with big ol’ emeralds and absolutely covered in diamonds. 32 massive emeralds and over 1,000 diamonds. If you’re watching the video version of this on either YouTube or Patreon you’re getting to see images of all these pieces. Go you. This set belonged to a woman by the name of Marie Louise who just so happened to be the second wife of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Marie Louise was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II and also the Austrian Archduchess so she was a very eligible bachelorette when she married Napoleon in 1810 shortly after he divorced his first wife Josephine for not being able to bear him an heir. So what is France like in 1810? This is after the French Revolution which took place starting in 1789, that’s episodes 90 and 91. Louis the sixteenth and his wife Marie Antoinette, king and queen of France, are beheaded, the monarchy is done away with. For the next 11 years, France is ruled by a series of committees and assemblies and consulates, one of which Napoleon was actually a part of. And his role as the first consul from 1799 to 1804 transformed into his role as all powerful emperor of France starting in 1805. This reign would last around a decade before the Bourbons, the old dynasty of Louis the sixteenth, the monarchy, was restored and Napoleon was exiled and imprisoned on an island and died, likely of arsenic poisoning from the green wallpaper in his bedroom. That’s one theory anyway. I have a mini fix on that, head over to Patreon, it’s called “Poisoned or Not Poisoned.”
But anyway, in the time that he was emperor, Napoleon married Marie Louise, and had this emerald necklace and earrings made for her. There was originally a tiara as well. He also had a diamond necklace made for her and I believe that’s what she’s wearing in portraits you’ve seen of her or what you’re seeing right now if you’re watching the video because this is a different necklace. It’s not green for one and it’s missing some of the little fan shaped pieces between the dangly bits. These do appear to be the emerald earrings though in this portrait. I don’t know maybe the artist just did a really bad job. Maybe he ran out of green paint, I don’t know. Didn’t want to get arsenic poisoning, who knows. Anyway, this set belonged to Empress Marie Louise. When Napoleon abdicated the throne and was exiled, they had to hand over the crown jewels back to the Bourbons, back to the monarchy but Marie Louise was allowed to keep her personal jewelry collection of which this set was part. So she got to keep the emerald necklace and earrings and tiara even as she fled France back to Austria. She bequeathed this set to her cousin Leopold II when she died. His descendents eventually sold it to a jeweler that sold off the emeralds from the tiara and replaced them with turquoise. The Smithsonian has that now. They also have the diamond necklace Napoleon had made for her. The necklace and earrings were left intact and sold to the Louvre in 2004 for $4 million dollars.
Next we go to the sapphire pieces that were stolen. This included a necklace, tiara, and one of a pair of earrings. They left behind the other earring. It was still in the case. Just haste I assume. These are made of these giant big round blue sapphires surrounded by thousands of diamonds. Think Princess Diana, now Kate Middleton’s, engagement ring but on steroids. 24 sapphires and 1,083 diamonds in all. So who did these beauties belong to? A few different ladies actually but mostly Marie-Amelie. According to Artnet quote “Marie-Amélie de Bourbon-Siciles straddled both sides of the French Revolution. She was both the niece of Marie Antoinette through her mother and the aunt of Napoleon I’s second wife, Empress Marie-Louise. Through her marriage to Louis-Philippe, who became king in 1830 following a revolt against the tyranny of Charles X, she became Queen of the French—and she had the jewels to show for it,” end quote. So let’s back it up a little, fill in some gaps. Napoleon gets exiled, dies, the Bourbon dynasty takes back over with Louis the eighteenth who was Louis the sixteenth’s brother. So the brother of the beheaded pre-revolution king. And you may be wondering, well what about Louis the seventeenth? It can’t go sixteenth eighteenth. Louis the seventeenth was the son of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette and he died at 10 years old in prison. Sad, I know. So the Bourbons take back over, monarchy restored with Louis the eighteenth. He dies without any heirs, other brother, Charles X, takes over. Charles is a bit of a tyrant. No one likes him. He gets overthrown in 1830 by the July Revolution and goes into exile. I told you guys. Chaos. That’s technically the end of the Bourbons. Next up is Louis Philippe who was Charles cousin but he comes from the house of Orleans not Bourbon so he starts the Orlean dynasty which is literally just him. Not much of a dynasty, cause it switches to presidents after that. Anyway, all that to say that the wearer of the sapphire set, Marie Amelie was the wife of Louis Philippe the last, technically the last king of France. The last to be called a king before it switched to presidents. So this also makes Marie Amelie the last queen of France.
But, before they were worn by Marie Amelie, the last queen of France, they belonged to a name I don’t even want to attempt but will, Hortense de Beauharnais (OR-tans duh boh-AR-nay). Hortense was Napoleon’s stepdaughter. She was the daughter of his first wife Josephine who, despite not being able to bear him any heirs, had two children already from a previous marriage when she married him. We don’t exactly know where this set came from. It’s believed it may have been a gift to Hortense from her mother Josephine and it may have been made using stones originally from the collection of Marie Antoinette, like a repurposing situation. But it ends up with Marie Amelie who most famously wore it as seen in this portrait if you’re watching the video. Now, Marie Amelie, you may notice if you’re looking at the portrait, she was older. She was 48 years old when she became queen. Remember she was the aunt of Napoleon’s second wife Marie Louise the emerald jewelry wearer who ruled 20 years before her. So she’s older than Marie Louise but ruling France well after her, 20 years later. They aren’t making it easy for us guys. The sapphire set passed on to Marie Amelie’s granddaughter Isabella d’Orleans and remained in the family until the Louvre acquired it in 1985. We don’t know the jeweler that made it. There are no recognizable signature markings but the Louvre called it quote “technical perfection.”
And that brings us to the final three stolen pieces, the pearl tiara, diamond bow brooch, and diamond reliquary brooch all belonging to Empress Eugenie. Eugenie de Montijo was born into Spanish nobility in 1825. She married President Louis Napoleon who would later transform into Emperor Napoleon III. So back it back up to Louis Philippe sapphire lady’s husband. He ended up having to abdicate the throne and go into exile in 1848. It switches to presidents now, no more kings. That starts with the first official president of France, Louis Napoleon. But Louis Napoleon, here’s something you need to know about him. He was related to the mighty Napoleon Bonaparte. He was his nephew, the son of Napoleon’s brother and stepdaughter. I know guys, I know this is confusing. Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense, original wearer of the sapphire set married Napoleon’s younger brother and their son was Louis Napoleon. So here’s what happened. Louis Napoleon was first legit democratically elected president of France. He comes to the end of his term. He can’t run for president again. He’s hit his term limit. No sir. Those rules don’t apply to THE Napoleon’s nephew. Rules can be changed. This actually terrifies me cause I wouldn’t put it past another Napoleon-esque world leader today to do something like this. He doesn’t want to stop being the president because of something silly like a term limit so he staged a coup in 1851 to seize power. He then held a popular election that approved a new constitution that made him emperor of France in 1852 just like dear old uncle Napoleon I. So, screw presidential term limits, I’ll just be an emperor instead. It’s fine. I have the name for it. President Louis Napoleon becomes Emperor Napoleon III.
Okay, Emperor Napoleon III married this Spanish princess Eugenie de Montijo in 1853 and he showered her with precious gems. He had the pearl tiara that was stolen made for her which had 200 pearls and around 3,000 diamonds on it. The pearls were repurposed from something in the collection of Marie Louise, Napoleon’s second wife, wearer of the emerald set that was also stolen. Eugenie’s brooch shaped like a bow and absolutely covered in diamonds that was stolen used to be part of the buckle of a diamond encrusted belt made for Eugenie. This belt had more than 4,000 diamonds on it. We know that it was on display at the 1855 Paris Exposition and that Eugenie wore it during a visit by England’s Queen Victoria also in1855. She also wore it to the baptism of her son in 1856. In the 1860s, Eugenie was sick of this heavy gaudy belt situation and she had it refashioned into a bow with this cascade of ribbons coming down all just completely covered in diamonds from the belt. The third piece of Eugenie’s jewelry that was stolen was a diamond reliquary brooch. So, a reliquary brooch was designed to hold a sacred relic which could be, you know, like a piece of the shroud of turin, part of the crown of thorns that Jesus wore, bones or bodily remains of a Saint, that kind of thing. A reliquary brooch has a place to store a relic. We know that Eugenie was very religious. She was Spanish. Relics are super Catholic. That checks out. The brooch is made of 94 diamonds that were repurposed into the brooch. They originally belonged to King Louis the fourteenth, builder of Versailles, so we know this guy was over the top. The diamonds were reworked into the brooch which was supposed to store a relic because it has the word reliquary engraved in the pin that was used to attach it, to wear it. But, experts could never really find a place to actually put a relic. So, who knows. Theoretically reliquary. The final piece, the 9th piece that was stolen but actually recovered, dropped next to the ladder truck, the crown, the most valuable piece taken, also belonged to Eugenie and that was that crown with the gold eagles and emeralds and diamonds. Girl raked it in. Napoleon III was trying to bring back the glory days. Make France great again I guess.
But, does it work? No. It does not work. Just like his uncle, Napoleon III is overthrown. He is forced to abdicate. He goes into exile. Same story all over again with all of these guys cause they all sucked. Try a woman. Just try it. It can’t be much worse. So what happens to all this bling when the second empire collapses? Well the third republic that came next, back to presidents, they ordered that the crown jewels all be auctioned off in 1887. The diamond bow brooch was bought by Caroline Astor of New York. The Astors were a very very wealthy American family at that time. This fortune came from the fur trade and eventually got funnelled into New York City real estate. Caroline Astor was the mother of John Jacob Astor IV who actually died on the Titanic, RIP. So she bought Eugenie’s diamond bow brooch at auction in 1887. It later passed into the possession of various English aristocrats before being bought by the Louvre in 2008 for an estimated 10 million dollars. The pearl tiara was also auctioned off in 1887 and remained in someone’s private collection until the Louvre bought it in 1992. And they actually got the reliquary brooch directly in 1887 during the auction. The Louvre bought it in the original auction.
Okay, so just to recap here. We have essentially 3 collections that were stolen: The emerald necklace and earrings belonging to Marie Louise, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, the sapphire tiara, necklace, and one earring that belonged to Marie Amelie, wife of Louise Philippe, the last king of France, and pearl tiara, diamond bow brooch, and diamond reliquary brooch that all belonged to Eugenie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III, wannabe second emperor of France. All stolen. Gone. Probably will not be recovered. I mean, I hope they are for their historical value but it is very very rare to recover stolen jewelry like this because here’s the thing you can’t just like put that on Facebook marketplace. You can’t sell these things because they’re so recognizeable. Everyone knows they’re stolen. Everyone is looking for them. That’s how Vincenzo Peruggia got caught, he tried to sell the Mona Lisa to an Italian antique dealer in Florence and the guy is like “umm, are you serious dude?” and turned him in. So you can’t sell this stuff as is. Someone could collect it and just like covet it secretly forever, but what’s the point of that? If someone is trying to liquidate this loot, if they’re trying to make money off this heist, they have to make the pieces unrecognizable first. They have to break them apart. They have to recut the gems. They have to repurpose them into other pieces of jewelry and then they have to sell that jewelry. So that means that, before too long, jewelry like this that is stolen ceases to exist. It dissipates. Poof. It’s other things now. It’s here, it’s there, who knows where it is. It’s gone. You can’t do that with paintings. You can’t sell off Mona Lisa’s nose to one guy and her eye to someone else. She has no value once you disassemble her. I mean honestly she probably definitely still would, but you know what I mean. It’s not the same.
Now I come back to Joey‘s sort of knee jerk reaction that he had when I brought this up to him, “good for them,” he said. Why? Why would that be his reaction? That brings us to the topic of ethics. Joey is clearly looking at this as… I love how we’re always studying my husband by the way. This is fun. He has no idea we do this. But from that reaction, “good for them,” he’s clearly looking at this as like a Robinhood situation, steal from the rich to feed the poor mentality. No I don’t think the jewel thieves have any intention of helping the poor and I don’t believe he does either. That would be amazing but that’s just not how these things go. So this is almost more of a sticking it to the man evolution of the Robinhood mentality. Right, they’ve taken so much from all of us for so long, this elite group, the aristocracy, the kings, the emperors, the tyrants. Let’s take something back. It doesn’t matter what happens to it or who gets it just they can’t have it anymore. Sticking it to the man. Now, I’m not saying it’s ever ethical to steal, but let’s examine the ethics behind the very existence of pieces of jewelry like this. Where did these gems come from? How did these world leaders acquire them in order to bedazzle their wives? Well, we know many of them were repurposed. The reliquary brooch diamonds came from Louis the 14th. We think the sapphire set was repurposed from the collection of Marie Antoinette. But where did those guys get the pieces? Let’s take a quick look at the various ways that crown jewels like this come into the possession of the world leaders. Sometimes they’re acquired as dowry through diplomatic marriages, right you marry a foreign princess and she brings her big ol diamond with her or whatever. But still it’s just like, she’s just from Austria, right? Where did Austria get the diamond. That doesn’t answer the question. For example, the gems that were stolen came from outside of Europe originally. The sapphires came from Sri Lanka, the emeralds came from Colombia, the pearls came from Asia, there were a lot of diamonds to track but we know that big $60 million regent diamond that actually wasn’t stolen, that came from India. So virtually all of these gems originated from outside of Europe. Some of them were likely traded or purchased but a lot of them were probably acquired through some form of conquest or colonization.
So let’s talk about that. These gems were traded between European countries a lot as dowry or gifts or exchanges or whatever so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which country was responsible for taking it from its place of origin but they’re pretty much all colonizers to some degree in Europe so it’s all the same. A lot of these gems that ended up in European crown jewel collections were sourced from regions that were under European control at the time. Sri Lanka, where the sapphires came from, was colonized by the Portuguese, Dutch, and then British between 1505 and 1948. That’s almost 450 years under European control if you’re counting. Colombia, where the emeralds came from, was colonized by the Spanish between 1499 and 1819, 320 years. India, where a lot of the diamonds probably came from, my goodness Europe really just had its way with India. India was colonized by, ready? Portugal, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, and then Great Britain between the years of 1498 and 1947, 450 years. It’s really no wonder European monarchs have so many dang diamonds from India thousands and thousands between all 8 pieces stolen from the Louvre. So what does this mean? Can we delude ourselves into thinking that these European countries boosted the economies of the places they colonized by paying fair prices for their gems. That’s not really how colonization and conquest work unfortunately. The way colonization and conquest work is that you go to a different place outside of your own country, a place where other people are already living, it’s their country, and you say “all of this, everything you have, it’s ours now, and we get to decide what to do with it.” It’s not exactly stealing in the traditional sense, it’s a bit of a spin off from stealing based on this really unequal power dynamic. Even when these gems were airquotes “fairly” purchased or traded, we still have to consider how that imbalance of power came into play. It’s still happening. I touched on this in episode 35 about diamonds. Whole bloody wars have been started over diamonds in countries in Africa so that a handful of already wealthy Europeans can get even wealthier.
This was similar to Vincenzo Peruggia’s motive for stealing the Mona Lisa back in 1911. He was Italian. He was an Italian immigrant living in France and working at the Louvre and he was disgusted by the number of Italian masterpieces the Louvre had, France had. He felt that that artwork belonged back in Italy where it came from, where it had been unfairly taken from. Napoleon Bonaparte had conquered and ruled Italy during his time as Emperor of France in the early 1800s and, during that time, he had stolen much of that artwork from Italy specifically for the Louvre museum. He straight up stole them, looting churches, palaces, and private collections. Peruggia wanted to see that artwork returned to Italy. It was a principle thing for him. But most of it was way too big to smuggle out under his painter's smock. He picked the Mona Lisa because it’s small, just 30 inches by 21 inches, not because it was stolen from Italy by Napoleon, it wasn’t. It did originate in Italy. Da Vinci was from Florence but he willingly moved to France and brought the Mona Lisa with him where he left it when he died with no instructions to return it to Italy or anything like that. So not the best choice possibly for Peruggia to prove his point but really the only Italian artwork small enough to steal.
And then you have to look at, you know a lot of the gems in the stolen pieces were repurposed from early crown jewels. They came from, like there were diamonds from Louis the fourteenth and there were gems from Marie Antoinette’s collection and even if they are purchasing these gems fairly, how are they purchasing them? With whose money? Where did Louis the fourteenth’s money come from? Where did Marie Antoinette’s money come from? It came from taxes. It came from French people, many of whom were living in extreme poverty. It was money that went to the government, to the king, who was then supposed to use it to provide for the people, except he didn’t, he bought diamonds with it, he built palaces like Versaille. It’s the whole reason for the French Revolution really in the first place. And so it’s kind of crazy to me that they’re still doing it after that. Napoleon with the emeralds and the diamonds for Marie Louise, the sapphires for Hortense. How quickly it went right back to that. Do you know how many French people you could feed with even one of those diamonds? And there were collectively thousands and thousands of them between these 8 stolen pieces, just sitting up their doing nothing on these lady’s heads and around their necks and dangling from their ears. It’s disgusting and it’s really no wonder that someone would have a “good for them” reaction to them being stolen.
But we do have to keep in mind that they no longer belonged to this elite aristocratic royalty that had them commissioned. Remember, the French government had auctioned off Eugenie’s pearl tiara and diamond brooches with most of the remaining crown jewels in 1887 and they did this for all the right reasons. They did this to raise money for social welfare, to help people, to finally turn those diamonds into food so people could eat. They also did this to get rid of anything that symbolized the old corrupt monarchy. Which is controversial. It’s the same type of argument we have in the US over tearing down plantation houses and statues of Confederate leaders. Do we erase it? Do we preserve it? How do we best learn from it? How do we avoid repeating it? The Louvre eventually acquired what they could through purchases from private collectors or families who had inherited the earlier pieces and they were displayed as a way of preserving French history and heritage and craftsmanship. I mean these are works of art, “technical perfection.” And so when you look at it that way, it’s not “good for them.” It’s a tragic loss for the French people and the world really. These are irreplaceable.
But then, and my mind spirals. You also have to look at the Louvre. Why does the Louvre get to have them? How did the Louvre buy them? Like the Louvre is an empress or a queen. Why does the Louvre get to wear these gems and show them off to the world? Who is behind that? Where does the Louvre get the money it uses to purchase these things? Well the French government funds it a little but really just for operational expenses. The money it uses to buy jewelry like this comes from its endowment fund which is essentially money from private donors. And yes it’s given to the Louvre for all the world to enjoy but, in a way, these things are still kind of owned by the world’s wealthiest elite, that upper echelon. And the Louvre certainly hasn’t bought everything it has on display. Quite a bit of it was straight up stolen, think those Italian renaissance masterpieces Napoleon stole. The Department of Egyptian Antiquities? How do you think that stuff got out of Egyptian tombs? Did they pay the dead pharaohs for it? Did they even pay Egypt? So it brings us to this ethical mobius strip of can you really steal something that was already stolen to begin with? Does it alter the severity of the crime? Should it impact our moral gut reaction to the theft? Should the world collectively mourn the loss of 8 pieces of France’s prized crown jewel collection or should we rejoice just the tiniest bit that the power imbalance that allowed for their existence has possibly shifted? Good for them.
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
Information used in this episode was sourced from Artnet, BBC, CBS News, ThoughtCo, and Wikipedia. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.
Sources:
Comments