hellovenezia

It may seem strange, but it is very interesting to following an itinerary through Venice that has been marked out by the art thieves, given the quality of the works that have been stolen by often highly professional thieves and, other times, by unexpected and often comic petty thieves.

The debate about what theft means in a city like Venice takes us way back in time, beginning with the artistic wealth that has been built up often further to ransacking “booty” after wars, of plundering the lands that have been conquered and then re-conquered by force. Perhaps it would take back to the city’s origins, from the escape from the mainland to the uninhabited lagoons and the first Venetian settlements.
Nothing new, invasions, wars, sacking, booty, it has been the story of numerous states and nations, and has changed the course of history in many of them.

In Venice an important part of its wealth is the rich booty the Venetians obtained from ransacking Constantinople, to settle the cash “prize” that had not been paid in full for the Christian fleet that was needed to transport the fourth crusade troops in 1204.
In this case the spoils were so rich that had to be divided among the conquerors, that, story holds, they filled three churches right up to the vaults and were divided in three eighths for the Venetians, three eighths for the crusaders and the remaining quarter to the future emperor of Constantinople.
Among the thousands of other things, the Venetians took home the four bronze horses that stood on St. Marks’s Basilica, the icon of the Madonna of Nicopeia and many other precious relics which are still kept in St. Mark’s treasure.
Likewise the ransacking of Venice and the Diaspora of its masterpieces occurred after the fall of the Republic beginning in 1797, as has often been lamented and documented and the centre of very heated arguments.
The main actors were first of all the French Napoleonic troops, then the Austrians from the Hapsburg Empire, nations that followed each other as dominators until the annex of the Veneto and Venice to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, in a city that had never been occupied before them.
Ransacking that was also due to the simultaneous loss of numerous works of art due to the incredible loss and sale of very rich private collections, without any sort of mediation or restriction by the public authorities, or again for the reasons we have already seen, due to the suppression of the churches and religious orders, through to the physical destruction of some very important architectural works.
This sort of deal, ransacking, raid and theft, as illustrated in the book by Alvise Zorzi “Venice Lost”, is the cause for a great deal of desperation and tears in true-blooded Venetians. Consequently the catalogues of the leading European museums, which are rich with masterpieces that were taken from, or came from Venice, give an idea of the exception wealth that passed through the city and its amazing value and quality.

However, returning to our itinerary through Venice, perhaps the most clamorous theft for the quality of the work, to be included in the list of the ten most sought after works by the Italian police (a classification that includes works like the Nativity by Caravaggio, the Bambinello by Ara Coeli, the Portrait of a Woman by Klimt, Ecce Homo by Antonello da Messina, the Sacred Family by Garofalo, the Madonna del Cucito by Francesco Cozza, a sanguine of St John Baptist by Leonardo, the Virgin, the Redeemer and St. Francesco of Assisi praying by Mattia Preti, the Martyrdom of St Erasmus by Poussin), is the small board painted in tempera and oil by Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), dated 1480 and entitled “Madonna of the Orchard” which was conserved in the church of the same name.
The Venetian theft was discovered the morning of 1st March 1993, and so far the search has not found the work.
The Church of the Madonna of the Orchard was built in the mid 14th century (shortly after 1355) by Tiberio da Parma, General of the Order of Humiliated, who was buried there when he died on 21st January 1377, and dedicated to St. Christopher Martyr.
In 1377 the people named it the Church of the Madonna of the Orchard after a sacred image was placed there on 18th of June or the Virgin Mary, which was considered miraculous, and was sculpted by Giovanni De Santi.

 Madonna dell'orto's church     The Bellini  

E’ considerata una delle più belle chiese veneziane, splendido il campo (la piazza) dove vi si affaccia con il pavimento in mattoni a spina di pesce, e magnifica la facciata gotica ornata delle statue degli apostoli.
Ospita la tomba di Jacopo Tintoretto, che della Madonna dell’Orto fu parrocchiano e vi lasciò numerosi dipinti che si possono ancor oggi ammirare in loco.
It is considered one of the loveliest churches in Venice, a beautiful square in front, with the herringbone tiled flooring and a magnificent gothic facade ornated with statues of the apostles.
It houses the tomb of Jacopo Tintoretto, who lived in the parish of Madonna dell’Orto and left numerous paintings, which can still be admired there.
Moving towards the centre of the city, we reach the Church of the Fava, next to Rialto Bridge, a hidden Church considered one of the minors, but stage for another clamorous art theft.
This time it was the work by Giambattista Tiepolo entitled “St Ann, the Virgin as a child and St Joachim, and is better known as the “Education of the Virgin”.
It is a very famous painting, very large measuring two by three meters. The theft is reported as quite incredible in the way it took place.
There was a sort of general run through: in fact a week earlier, the thieves stole another painting of the Via Crucis from the same church, because it has no alarm system.
The night of 14th December 1993 two people hid inside a confessional. When the church closed they were left alone and they nonchalantly lit the votive candles to give themselves some light, used a stepladder that was already inside to lift the painting down with its whole very heavy frame, placed it on the ground and tried to cut the canvas out with a simple cutter.
It was not very easy and, in fact they did not manage, but unperturbed they involved a hesitant third accomplice, who warned them: “It’s bad luck to steal from the church!”
The discussion continued in a nearby bar where they had a meal, and had to conclude the deal.
They returned to the church where they had the time to smoke a couple of cigarettes – perhaps joints – then cut out the canvas and left undisturbed.
The bulky difficult canvas unrolled onto the square though, and they had to hurriedly roll it up again and tie it with their shoelaces.
They hid it with the intention of cutting it into four and then selling it separately, in a farmhouse near Marco Polo Airport in Tessera, but it was found and recovered intact three months later.

              Giambattista Tiepolo, Sant'Anna, la Vergine Bambina e San Gioacchino, Venezia, chiesa della Fava  

When talking about art thieves or experts, Venice can boast both the last of the “Gentlemen thieves” a category which we know combines imagination and skill, and acrobats to refuse all violence against the victim of the theft, and also a real “Venetian school” with a licence for thieving expertise through a hole, floor, wall or roof.
The stories and adventures of the gentlemen thieves accompany us along the Zattere up to the Salt Warehouses.
In a side alley, the Calle dello Squero, there is the last home-studio of Emilio Vedova (Venice 1919-2006) and the foundation named after him, a great name in contemporary art.
The last of the clamorous art thefts in Venice took place at the end of March 2007, and was of the typical “school”: a hole was made in the roof, someone climbed down into the Foundation and took a considerable number of small works of drawings, sketches and graphic paintings.
At the time nobody noticed, but the investigations were successful and everything was soon solved.

 Emilio Vedova

In four large boxes that were found in the storeroom of a seventy-year old man on the Giudecca Island, 346 works by the Master were recovered.
Small, but given their quotations, quite “good”.