In Chap­ter 3, titled “The Art Thief,” we delve into the com­plex psy­che of Stéphane Bre­itwieser, a man who sees him­self not as an art thief but as a con­nois­seur pur­su­ing beau­ty. Despite his exten­sive theft of art­works, curat­ed with the help of Anne-Cather­ine Klein­klaus, Bre­itwieser express­es con­tempt for most oth­er art thieves whose meth­ods he con­sid­ers brutish. He is par­tic­u­lar­ly repulsed by the infa­mous heist at the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um in 1990, where thieves, dis­guised as police offi­cers, bound guards and van­dal­ized price­less paint­ings, includ­ing Rem­brandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” For Bre­itwieser, the delib­er­ate destruc­tion of art is a vio­la­tion of its sanc­ti­ty.

Bre­itwieser’s method­ol­o­gy stark­ly con­trasts with the Gard­ner thieves; he treats art with rev­er­ence. He care­ful­ly removes paint­ings from their frames, ensur­ing that they remain intact and unharmed, show­cas­ing a twist­ed form of respect for the pieces he steals. He believes that steal­ing should not result in degra­da­tion, pro­mot­ing the view that art should be expe­ri­enced inti­mate­ly and away from the ster­ile atmos­phere of muse­ums, which he crit­i­cizes for being oppres­sive and unfriend­ly to gen­uine emo­tion­al engage­ment.

In his mind, muse­ums are mere­ly pris­ons for art, lim­it­ing the expe­ri­ence to con­trolled tours and ster­ile envi­ron­ments that inhib­it true appre­ci­a­tion. Bre­itwieser dis­cuss­es the allure of art­works like the ivory “Adam and Eve,” empha­siz­ing their sen­su­al­i­ty and the desire for clos­er, more per­son­al inter­ac­tion. Despite his pas­sion, Bre­itwieser acknowl­edges that few art thieves share his aes­thet­ic moti­va­tions; instead, many are dri­ven by greed and dis­re­gard for art’s intrin­sic val­ue.

Breitwieser’s roman­tic coun­ter­part, Anne-Cather­ine, rep­re­sents a prag­mat­ic bal­ance to his whim­si­cal ideals. While she remains large­ly silent on the mat­ter, it is evi­dent that she views their activ­i­ties with a sense of cau­tion. Liv­ing in his mother’s home with­out pay­ing rent, they exist in a real­i­ty marked by finan­cial strain, rely­ing on wel­fare and mod­est jobs instead of pur­su­ing the cash­ing out of stolen pieces, which Bre­itwieser dis­miss­es as dis­grace­ful.

Ulti­mate­ly, Bre­itwieser aspires to be regard­ed not as a thief but as an art col­lec­tor or “art lib­er­a­tor,” claim­ing that his sole moti­va­tion stems from a desire to sur­round him­self with beau­ty, even as their lifestyle reveals stark con­tra­dic­tions to this self-image.