Top Ten Bob Rosses Of Felony

Sploid is a big help For Day 3 of Blottered Art Week. If you're not familiar (and bitch you're familiar with Sploid if you read Blottered) it's claim to fame is the "Choose your layout Grid or Plain" box where you, the end user, are able to choose the layout most pleasurable to your eye. Of course, some people say "Neither" but I like it. If Gawker is the Microsoft of the Blog, then Sploid is its Windows ME. I don't know how good an analogy that was, but dudes and dudettes, face it, Gawker is not "Indie". 'Kay now I feel smart and on top of things. Here's the list.

FBI's Top Ten Art Heists

7,000-10,000 looted
and stolen Iraqi
artifacts, 2003

12 paintings from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum theft, 1990

2 Renoirs and 1
Rembrandt stolen from Sweden's National Museum, 2000
(Recovered)

Munch's The Scream and The
Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo, 2004

Benevenuto Cellini
Salt Cellar from Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2003

Caravaggio's
Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco from Palermo,
1969

Davidoff-Morini
Stradivarius violin from a New York apartment, 1995

Two Van Gogh
paintings from Amsterdam's Vincent Van Gogh Museum, 2002

Cezanne's View of
Auvers-sur-Oise from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, 1999

Da Vinci's Madonna
of the Yarnwinder from Scotland's Drumlanrig Castle, 2003

Can you pick the one that doesn't fit? The Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius violin stolen from a New York apartment. Strads are generally named after the person who played them or owned them, usually famous musicians. The King of Spain has the largest collection, which would seem rather small to Baseball card enthusiasts, two violins, two cellos, and a viola. But in reality, that's quite a lot, considering there's about 700 or so left in existence. "Beuno, King of Spain!"*

The one I think most people are familiar with, since everyone has an Aunt Poppingew or two who specifically tarries in the Borders clearance section with all those mysterious bundles of joy, wrapped candied candles, elegantly designed minimalist journals, Yoga books with lots of pictures of 70's people playing an elaborate unofficial game of Twister with their gross nylon clothed bodies --- is Munch's the Scream whose reprint populates just about every third postcard or so at Borders. Munch was Norwegian, in case you wanted a background.

FBI TOP TEN ART CRIMES Via Sploid

*Thanks encyclozine!