to criticize.”
*The National Gallery in London outbid the Getty and kept Raphael’s masterpiece in Britain. The seller, the Duke of Northumberland, pocketed $65 million ($40 million of it tax-free). In the 1980s, the painting had been attributed to a follower of Raphael and valued at $11,000.
*Almost everything written in Shakespeare’s hand has been lost, with the exception of six signatures (each spelled differently). With Shakespeare out of the running, the record price for a handwritten document currently stands at $30.8 million, paid by Bill Gates in 1994 for a seventy-two-page manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci. The so-called Codex Leicester is a collection of scientific observations studded with drawings that probe such mysteries as the brightness of the moon and the meandering of rivers.
*Trench police estimated Breitwieser’s haul at between $1.4 billion and $1.9 billion. Jonathan Sazonoff, a television producer and expert on art crime, suggests that a more accurate guess might be in the neighborhood of $150 million.
*Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, scholars say that the authenticity of the Louvre’s
*It should perhaps be stated explicitly that the amount of art stolen by modern-day gangsters is dwarfed by the amount stolen by the Nazis, gangsters backed by the full might of the state. All armies have looted, but the Nazis made the process organized and efficient. In France alone, according to Hector Feliciano’s
*The British journalist Peter Watson wrote