Madonna falls off face of the earth

[emad]

August 27, 2005

Madonna falls off face of the earth
By David Lister

Two years after a Leonardo painting was stolen in a daring castle raid, police say that it could be at least 20 years before it is returned



IT WAS one of the art heists of the century, a daring daylight raid pulled off in front of CCTV cameras and with such nonchalance that it has already been turned into a novel. But investigators have given warning that it may take up to 20 years to recover a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece stolen from a Scottish castle.

On the eve of the second anniversary of the theft of The Madonna with the Yarnwinder from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the FBI’s most senior art crime investigator said that it could take a generation before it resurfaced.


The theft of the 16th-century painting, valued at up to £50 million, stunned the art world when it was stolen in broad daylight from the private collection of the Duke of Buccleuch on August 27, 2003. Two men posing as tourists calmly removed it from the wall after overpowering a female guide, then climbed out of a window and made their escape in a white Volkswagen Golf.

But despite myriad theories about the thieves, including speculation that they were loyalist terrorists or members of the Russian mafia, Dumfries and Galloway Police confirmed yesterday that they had disbanded a special inquiry team set up after the raid.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1752336,00.html

[Kicked in the Taco]

1. thanks for getting my hopes up

:(

[LiberalVoice]

2. Seriously. nt

[blue sky at night]

4. Yo, Kicked in the Taco...........

welcome to DU!!! :) :), I love that name. ARe you deranged or just silly? Excuse me, replied to wrong post, I am deranged.

[Kicked in the Taco]

5. Deranged or silly...?

I'll go with slightly dangerous combination of both.;):) I lifted the name from a song by Frank Black, from his album 'Cult of Ray' that I love but everyone else seems to hate!

And thanks for the welcome!:hi:

[blue sky at night]

8. Cool.........

I will check him out, meanwhile I hope your "taco" is feeling better.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Mine too!!!

[unrepuke]

3. My 1st thought; (Groan) Not another missing white woman!

[...of J.Temperance]

7. emad, is this the subject of your forthcoming da Vinci documentary?

The curious theft of The Madonna?

I must admit, that when I first read your subject like here, I THOUGHT it was going to be about Madonna, as in Madonna. I mean, we know she's recently fallen off a horse, and I was thinking "Good God! She's fallen off the face of the earth now?"

[emad]

9. No, it's about the four OTHER versions of the Mona Lisa -

variations on a theme - that have been in private UK ownership for a long long time and have only ever been exhibited in private to museum curators from Europe, US and UK.

They form part of a 'Florentine Drawingroom' that contains other major Leonardo artefacts including an astonishing gold clock, some figurines and tapestries.

Don't know what the insurance bill for these must be but when they were unveiled at the private show in 1996 the security was tighter than any political/state event ever staged.

The curator of the Metropolitan Museum wanted a special deal to have the whole Drawingroom shown in the US and at one stage there were some negotiations about it.

The private collectors who own this stuff have kept a pretty low profile about their pics.

The documentary is about how these art treasures were acquired, their provenance between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries and the international accreditations made by the world's top art treasure experts who authenticated them initially, in the early 1960s.

[...of J.Temperance]

10. Heck, well I'll definately watch that

It sounds marvellous. We need more and more brain feeding documentaries.

[Nihil]

11. "The Madonna with the Yarnwinder"?

Sounds more like "The Madonna with the Big Boobies" ...
("Listen carefully, I shall say zis only once")

[emad]

12. As opposed to "Madonna with the Sidewinder".....

?