This week three works were stolen from the National Gallery in Athens. One was a riverside windmill painted by Piet Mondrian (1905); another a 16th century sketch of St. Diego de Alcala by Guglielmo Caccia; the third was this painting of a woman’s head by Picasso (1939). Some reports claim that the robber(s) repeatedly set off the alarms until the guards assumed they were malfunctioning and shut them off. I had planned to see the museum over the weekend—before they closed for renovation (on the day of the heist)—but it was closed due to guard strikes, which are becoming increasingly common here.
