[yellowcherry]

I always assume there's a buyer lined up before these things ever happen.

But then, when they stole The Scream a while back they clearly had no exit strategy, so who knows?

[rapnie]

Exactly. In 2012 seven priceless paintings (Picasso, Gauguin, Matisse, Monet) were stolen from Kunsthal museum, Rotterdam. Speculation about 'the art theft of the century' all over the place..

Appeared they were extreme amateurs that just smashed a window, carried away the paintings in the back of their car to Romania. Didn't know what to do with them, and when one of the robbers was caught, his mother burnt them all in the fireplace.

read: https://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/

At least, I guess, these guys here could meld the gold and sell the stones individually on the black market.

[51]

Wow, I hope she went to jail too

[marmshallow]

It appears she did indeed go to jail, but is probably now out.

> Olga Dogaru was convicted of transporting and hiding stolen property (two years).

http://www.criminalelement.com/the-romanian-connection-the-k...

[pnloyd]

Ya.. that was really hard to read and I'm not even an art fan.

[lb1lf]

The last time The Scream was stolen, it was meant to create a diversion; Norway had recently had a Heat-style armed robbery in which a police officer was shot dead; The Scream was stolen in an effort to divert resources from the robbery investigation. (IIRC)

[r00fus]

How do they know they got the original back?

[mrdmnd]

I saw an article on here a few days ago that suggested you could detect isotopes present in "more recent" forgeries that came about as the result of the nuclear testing age that would not be present on the originals.

[dharmab]

You can test the pigments in the paint to see if period-correct materials were used. A lot of forgeries use pigments that wouldn't have been invented or otherwise available at the time.

[acjohnson55]

Assuming there are copies, "the original" is the one everything believes to be the original. If the one actually created by Munch is a different one, it's not worth a whole lot if people don't generally believe that to be the case.

[Someone]

Nitpick: it is a bit weird to talk of the original or even of the Scream. Munch created four versions, two paintings and two pastels (in addition, about 45 prints of a lithograph were made, a few of which were hand-colored by Munch)

It seems we don’t know for sure which is the oldest. One of the paintings and one of the pastels both are from 1893. It’s natural to assume the pastel was a study for the painting, but we don’t know for sure.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream)