There are a few hallmarks of a heist: a team of experts, an object of desire, and the marriage of skill, technology, and charisma to bring the two together. often, there’s a big payout at the end. But for the perpetrator of the largest art theft in European history, there was no team, as such, and definitely no payout—just a consistent use of the five-finger discount at the unlikeliest of places. In Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, the twists and turns of this story are told less luridly than you might expect.
There are a lot of art enthusiasts with a chip on their shoulder, but few of them turn to theft to validate their love. And none have expressed that love quite like Stephane Breitweiser. From 1995 to 2001, Stephane, with the help of his then-girlfriend, Anne-Catherine, made their way through museums, galleries, and auction houses in their native France and throughout Europe. It started small—a painting here, a figurine there, all easily concealed in a bag or pocket—but Stephane’s appetite grew with his collection. By the time his greed outpaced his cleverness, the thefts amounted to roughly $2 billion worth of priceless and irreplaceable works.
Not that Stephane was spending any of it. Rather, his attic bedroom, where the two lived away from the prying eyes of his mother downstairs, became one of the world’s best museums. Priceless paintings hung on the walls and ceiling while surfaces were covered with statuettes and relics. Even when the attic began running out of space, and even when Stephane was caught and let go with varying degrees of slaps on the wrists, Europe’s museums got a little poorer and his collection grew.
Until, of course, he got caught for real.
The bones of the story are easy to find online. The value in going to The Art Thief instead of Wikipedia is in Finkel’s research beyond the headlines, including court transcripts, journals, and interviews with many of the people involved—including Stephane. There’s a little omniscience here, with Finkel and the reader knowing the end from the beginning, but the fascination of the crime is not in its unfolding but its sheer magnitude. That, and Stephane’s unconventional (he’d call it “pure”) motives for his crimes.
Throughout the book, I developed not sympathy for Stephane and this unadulterated passion for fine art, but pity. He clearly has a compulsion to take, whether or not he needs it, whether or not his wanting of it measures up to the risk of doing so, or whether it would truly be safer in his possession. That last question becomes particularly pointed near the end, when, though through no direct fault of Stephane’s, some of the treasures are lost forever. Anne-Catherine’s part is smaller here, both because her involvement was, as Finkel tells it, secondary to Stephane’s masterminded larceny, and because she declined to be as involved as other players. Stephane’s mother, too, skirts much involvement in the book, just as she did her complicity in her son’s crimes. These are noticeable omissions, but likely ones that couldn’t be helped, given the reality of working with living subjects.
Though Finkel’s research does seem considerable, The Art Thief is still a slim book, under 200 pages (hardly longer than a robust Wikipedia article). The story is riveting enough to make the pages fly by. The questions Stephane’s philosophy and crime stir up will last much longer than that.
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