Chap­ter 19 explores Bre­itwieser’s deep­en­ing obses­sion with art as he con­tin­ues his spree of thefts, now focused on spe­cif­ic types of art­work that cap­ti­vate him beyond the mere thrill of the crime. Ini­tial­ly, his inter­est spanned a wide array of objects, from medieval weapon­ry to bronze pieces, as he sought out trea­sures that caught his eye in the moment. How­ev­er, as time passed and his expe­ri­ences grew, he found him­self more drawn to par­tic­u­lar gen­res of art. Anne-Cather­ine and Bre­itwieser fre­quent­ly spent time togeth­er in their attic, con­tem­plat­ing the rea­sons behind their attrac­tion to cer­tain pieces. They engaged in thought­ful dis­cus­sions with Meich­ler at the frame shop, refin­ing their under­stand­ing of what made a piece wor­thy of their atten­tion. Over time, Bre­itwieser real­ized his incli­na­tion toward north­ern Euro­pean works from the 16th and 17th cen­turies, sig­nal­ing a more refined and inten­tion­al approach to his crim­i­nal actions. His pref­er­ence for these spe­cif­ic pieces rep­re­sents not only a deep­en­ing of his art thefts but also a shift in his under­stand­ing of what art means to him.

The ques­tion of why Bre­itwieser devel­oped such a spe­cif­ic affin­i­ty for cer­tain types of art is a com­plex one, as it defies easy expla­na­tion. Unlike the essen­tial sur­vival needs addressed by Dar­win­ian prin­ci­ples, art plays a role in human cul­ture that tran­scends basic exis­tence. It demands resources and atten­tion but does not serve imme­di­ate sur­vival pur­pos­es, chal­leng­ing tra­di­tion­al sur­vival instincts. Across cul­tures, how­ev­er, art has per­sist­ed, sug­gest­ing that it holds sig­nif­i­cance beyond the tan­gi­ble. Some the­o­rize that art emerged as a form of social or sex­u­al sig­nal­ing, espe­cial­ly as humans evolved beyond the imme­di­ate strug­gle for sur­vival. This cre­ative out­let, once sur­vival pres­sures were alle­vi­at­ed, allowed humans to explore and express them­selves in ways that con­nect­ed them to their envi­ron­ment and to one anoth­er. The birth of art, thus, could be viewed as a byprod­uct of human evo­lu­tion, rep­re­sent­ing an escape and a reflec­tion of the human need to express ideas, emo­tions, and ideals.

Art, in its var­ied forms, remains deeply sub­jec­tive, influ­enced not only by per­son­al pref­er­ences but also by broad­er cul­tur­al con­texts. Soci­o­log­i­cal research has shown that there are pat­terns in the kinds of art that peo­ple are drawn to, includ­ing land­scapes with trees and water. This aligns with the uni­ver­sal human con­nec­tion to nature, as blue, the col­or of the sky and water, is the most uni­ver­sal­ly pre­ferred. Fur­ther­more, stud­ies in neu­ro­science have revealed that the medi­al orbital-frontal cor­tex plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in our per­cep­tion of beau­ty, help­ing to explain why cer­tain images and pieces of art res­onate more with us than oth­ers. This sci­en­tif­ic insight into how the brain process­es beau­ty helps to ground Bre­itwieser’s emo­tion­al respons­es to the art­works he steals, demon­strat­ing that the appre­ci­a­tion of art is far from ran­dom. It is deeply root­ed in the way our brains are wired, cre­at­ing a con­nec­tion between the visu­al stim­uli of art and the emo­tion­al respons­es they pro­voke.

Breitwieser’s love for spe­cif­ic art forms, par­tic­u­lar­ly oil paint­ings, reveals his attach­ment to cer­tain tech­niques and his­tor­i­cal peri­ods. He is drawn to the lumi­nos­i­ty and vibran­cy cre­at­ed by the use of flaxseed oil, a key mate­r­i­al in Renais­sance paint­ing. The qual­i­ty of the mate­ri­als used dur­ing the Renais­sance era is some­thing that Bre­itwieser finds par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant. It is a con­trast to the more mut­ed and less dynam­ic styles found in south­ern Euro­pean works. His pref­er­ence for works by less­er-known artists speaks to a desire for art that isn’t influ­enced by the com­mer­cial pres­sures placed on the big names of the art world, such as Tit­ian or Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Bre­itwieser val­ues what he per­ceives as the authen­tic­i­ty and puri­ty of small­er works, pro­duced with­out the con­straints of patron­age or main­stream accep­tance.

One of Breitwieser’s most intrigu­ing inter­ests lies in cab­i­net paint­ings, small-scale works that were often cre­at­ed for pri­vate enjoy­ment rather than pub­lic dis­play. These art­works, which were eas­i­ly con­ceal­able, rep­re­sent a moment in his­to­ry when crafts­man­ship and per­son­al expres­sion were at their peak before the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion. Bre­itwieser is also drawn to objects such as tobac­co box­es and wine gob­lets, admir­ing the metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship that went into their cre­ation before mass pro­duc­tion took over. For him, these items sym­bol­ize the pin­na­cle of human cre­ativ­i­ty, made dur­ing a time when artistry was painstak­ing­ly hand­craft­ed rather than auto­mat­ed. His attic, filled with these stolen art­works and antiques, serves as a per­son­al trib­ute to a lost era, an era of unpar­al­leled beau­ty and crafts­man­ship. It is here, among these relics, that Bre­itwieser finds a sense of ful­fill­ment, as each item tells a sto­ry of artis­tic achieve­ment and human inge­nu­ity. The objects in his col­lec­tion are more than just stolen goods—they are a reflec­tion of Breitwieser’s com­plex rela­tion­ship with art and his desire to pos­sess not just the art­work, but the his­to­ry and the emo­tion­al con­nec­tion that it rep­re­sents.