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dated Mar 29, 2015 BOSTON – The FBI has positively identified the two robbers who in 1990 committed the largest art heist in history, stealing over $500 million worth of masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here. One of them is a local ex-con who was free only because his lawyer, now Secretary of State John Kerry, was able to get his first-degree murder conviction overturned in 1982. “We got justice,” Kerry told a reporter in 2009 of his work for the notorious hoodlum, “and I’ll go to my grave proud that we did.” Multiple law-enforcement sources here have...

Sometimes, additional provenance information about a painting can significantly increase its perceived value. In the case of a small nocturne showing a Biblical scene, a shift in attribution from the Circle of Rembrandt to the actual Dutch master himself has increased its auction estimate by several hundred-fold. When The Adoration of the Kings was last auctioned by Christie’s in Amsterdam in 2021, it had an estimate of €10,000 to €15,000. Sotheby’s is now listing the oil on oak panel with an estimate of £10 million to £15 million ($12.2 million to $18.4 million) as part of its OId Masters and...

Respecting and honoring the purity of women is one of the reasons human beings need to be free. Rembrandt (born 15 July, 1606) knew this. Enid Bennett was born on 15 July, 1893, in York, Western Australia. She went from the stage to an acting career in silent films in America. She was beautiful. Over the centuries, respecting women and admiring them as babes are two sides of the one coin.

n 1636, according to an 1841 account by Scottish author Charles MacKay, the entirety of Dutch society went crazy over exotic tulips. As Mackay wrote in his wildly popular, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, as prices rose, people got swept up in a speculative fever, spending a year’s salary on rare bulbs in hopes of reselling them for a profit. Mackay dubbed the phenomenon “The Tulipomania.”

The Secret Service on Tuesday slammed "outlandish" suggestions that its agents are "incompetent to carry out forensic examinations" following the arrest of a Chinese national who is accused of trying to enter President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club with a thumb drive containing malware. “Assertions that U.S. Secret Service agents are incompetent to carry out forensic examinations on digital media (ie thumbdrives, laptops, cellphones, etc.) is outlandish and not rooted in fact," a Secret Service spokesperson said in a released statement. The spokesperson added that the agency's Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program (ECSAP) "is internationally recognized" said there are special agents who...

Bob Jones University is what most would call a fundamentalist school. No one, however, should think that it has low academic standards or is anti-cultural. The heavy emphasis on producing Shakespeare’s plays, the gallery of great religious art, as well as an exact replica of the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey tell us otherwise. One thing nearly all of us Protestants who have visited this beautiful and well-presented gallery cannot help noticing is the heavy preponderance, not only of Roman Catholic artists, but also of specifically Catholic themes. When Bob Jones, Jr. was challenged with the question, “Why do you...

A Rembrandt drawing, valued at $250,000 (£153,625), has been taken from a hotel in California in a "well thought-out, well-executed theft", police have said. The piece, called The Judgement, was taken from an exhibition at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, a Los Angeles County Sheriff spokesman said. It was stolen on Saturday between 22:20 and 22:35 local time when a curator was distracted by a guest, he added. Police are studying surveillance video from the hotel. The Dutch master's quill pen and black ink drawing, which dates back to about 1655, was part of an exhibition at the hotel...

New life has been breathed into Dutch master painter Rembrandt's 'Night Watch', the famous dark-toned 17th-century painting of city guards gathering to march For more than three centuries, the identity of the men depicted in the massive portrait hanging in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum have been unknown, but a Dutch historian now claims to have identified them all. The painting, some 363 cm by 437 cm, is considered the Rijksmuseum's most famous painting. The Rijksmuseum said on Wednesday retired historian Bas Dudok van Heel has identified the men after years of research. "It is great for both the museum and the public...

Finally, what with a snow day and all, I have time to write one more installment of the history of art. Today’s “lesson” is Baroque art. Baroque art dates from 1600-1715 or so. (The dates are different with different media. The end of Baroque art coincides with the death of King Louis XIV in 1715; Baroque music ends with the death of Bach in 1750.) The expansion in Baroque artistic space reflects the expansion of political empires (into the New World) and the expansion of scientific knowledge (the invention of microscopes and telescopes: with space expanding outward and contracting inward)....

Two paintings previously thought to be fake Rembrandts were actual works by the Dutch master, Copenhagen's National Gallery said yesterday. International art experts have re-evaluated 10 canvases that bear Rembrandt's signature but were kept in storage for years because they were thought to be copies by his students. The five experts concluded that two of the paintings were by Rembrandt, said the director of the museum, Allis Helleland.

Two thieves broke into a museum in a northern Serbian city, snatching four valuable paintings, including works by Rembrandt and Rubens. Police in the city of Novi Sad, 50 kilometres north of the capital of Belgrade, say the masked robbers entered the City Museum early Sunday morning and tied up the guards. Police official Stevan Krstic said the stolen pieces include Rembrandt Van Rijn's Portrait of Father, Peter Paul Rubens' Seneca, a miniature by Italian baroque painter Pier Francesco Mola and another oil painting by an anonymous 16th-century Dutch painter. The City Museum exhibits fine and applied arts from the...

Two oil paintings purported to have been the work of Rembrandt have been shown to be fakes, the director of the museum where they are kept has said. The works were donated to the municipal museum in Faro, southern Portugal, in 1944 and were displayed for 25 years despite doubts over their authenticity. Tests have now shown the 17th Century Dutch master could not have painted them, Dalia Paulo told AFP news agency. This was because they used pigments not available until the 19th Century. Anniversary plans The paintings, one a supposed self-portrait of Rembrandt and the other said to...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 15 (HealthDayNews) -- A vision problem just might explain the rich talent of one of history's greatest painters. According to a new report, the renowned Dutch master Rembrandt was walleyed, a condition that possibly boosted his ability to depict a three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional canvas "Stereo vision," a kind of depth perception, is limited in people whose eyes are poorly aligned. Misaligned eyes are fairly common, and people often don't realize they're lacking full depth perception. In Rembrandt, his apparent walleyes -- which look away from each other -- "would have made him better at seeing" from...