1/4 The World's Most Expensive Stolen Paintings

• The World's Most Expen...
First broadcast: 21 Dec 2013.
Art critic Alastair Sooke delves into the murky world of art theft. Despite the high stakes - and often daring - involved, many cases are shrouded in mystery and go unnoticed by the media.
Around 47,000 works of art are reported missing each year, yet it is only the heists involving the world's most valuable paintings that hit the headlines. But high-profile or not - once gone, the works are rarely recovered.

[@---cr8nw]

The 1990 theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was done pretty much exactly like you demonstrated at the beginning of the video. They were CUT from their frames, probably with a box cutter similar to the one you used. There's nothing admirable or intriguing about it. It was senseless destruction and theft.

[@rricarus1893]

fantastic! i admire Alastair Sooke so much , can't wait to watch this video. thank you taran333tula, thank you for sharing the material!

[@kerry301166]

as always keeping art interesting. keep up your work. bravo

[@jabbermocky]

The empty frames at the Gardner hang like guilty men, alone but somehow conspiratorial with the remaining master works that hang beside them. CLUE: ?

[@artistsingerwriterproducer8288]

From me would stolen my own artwork again and again in 98000 and all my documents too.

[@benwilson6145]

A thought, at the Gardner the pictures were stolen to order, and the Napoleonic standard was a private use of the thief?

[@MicaRayan]

So suave

[@theemurman1]

What is the thought process of something not being a crime because it’s insured. Do they not understand insurance?

[@mrbarbelbarbello2332]

Pierce Brosnan...it woz 'im wot dunnit.

[@VenusIsleNews]

thin air?

[@VenusIsleNews]

rare originals!

[@onurozdemir3656]

Why would anyone desire art theft? :) Funny start...

[@williamschlenger1518]

Inside job.Maybe an ex employee, some one who spent a lot of time there but wasn't an art expert. I would have taken the Vermeer.

[@beatrizboccheciampe4941]

THA WAS IN COMBINATION WITH THE GUARD. HOW STUPID.

[@carabosse4]

ooo

[@peterhinton6164]

alastair Sooke is hot !

[@bristow-smithquentin8691]

Russian oligarch