Law & Politics
Fifteen Years After Theft, Alleged Rembrandt Painting Rescued by French Police
Sarah Cascone
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According to the 2011 book Stealing Rembrandts, more work by the Dutch master has been stolen than that of any other artist. As of today, one fewer of Rembrant’s canvases may be counted among the missing, as French police have successfully recovered Child With a Soap Bubble, a portrait attributed to the artist that was stolen from the Municipal Museum of Draguignan in 1999.
However, some doubt remains as to whether the work is actually by the artist’s hand—the Art Market Monitor cites French-language paper Tribune de l’art as identifying Child With a Soap Bubble as an eighteenth-century French painting.
According to French newspaper Liberation and the Huffington Post, two men aged 44 and 51 were arrested while trying to sell the canvas in Nice. If it is a Rembrandt, the painting’s value is estimated at $5.4 million.
The Art Loss Register reported 337 missing Rembrandts in a 2012 report.
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