Friday 31st October
Bavarian police have seized millions of euros worth of forged art claiming to show works by Picasso, Rembrandt and Kahlo in an operation spanning Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Authorities in Bavaria said the main suspect is a 77-year-old German man who, along with 10 alleged accomplices, is facing charges of conspiracy and fraud.
Investigators first became suspicious when the septuagenarian ringleader attempted to sell two supposedly original paintings by Picasso on the art market.
He then wanted to sell De Staalmeesters, a famous oil painting by Dutch old master Rembrandt, for 120 million Swiss francs (£113m) - despite the original hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (BLKA) said the forged De Staalmeesters - which is sometimes referred to as the Masters of the Clothmakers' Guild - was owned by an 84-year-old Swiss woman.
She is now being investigated by the Amberg public prosecutor's office, the BLKA and Swiss authorities after the forged piece was confiscated in Switzerland.
At the time, after being examined by an art expert, the police said: "It was, as suspected, a copy and not a lost masterpiece by Rembrandt van Rijn."
The painting was seized during a co-ordinated series of dawn raids across Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein on Wednesday 15 October.
During the searches, a large number of suspected art forgeries were found and seized, the BLKA said, along with "documents, records, mobile phones, storage media and cloud data".
Bavarian police said the main suspect attempted to sell a further 19 counterfeit works, purportedly by world-famous artists for between €400,000 (£349,000) and €14m (£12.2m).
They included copies of work by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo as well as Flemish old master Peter Paul Rubens, Italian sculptor Amedeo Modigliani and Spain's Joan Miró.
He was assisted by 74-year-old German man who "prepared expert reports specifically to confirm the authenticity of the artworks".
The BLKA said that he and the main suspect were arrested on the day of the raids before being conditionally released.
The police said that the investigation is in progress.
"Among other things, all confiscated paintings will be examined in detail by experts and appraisers in the coming weeks," police said.
Also this week more news of the “stolen “ Picasso from last week’s blog. Apparently it was never stolen.
As it turns out, the painting had never left Madrid. The artworks in the truck had been numbered improperly, and the valuable artwork was left behind in the doorway of a building in Madrid, where a neighbour mistook it for an abandoned package and scooped it up for safekeeping.
Mystery solved on that one however:
Around 2,000 gold and silver coins worth around €90,000 (£78,000; $104,000) were stolen during a raid at another French museum - just hours after the audacious theft of some of the French crown jewels at the Louvre in Paris.
The incident happened at a museum dedicated to French philosopher Denis Diderot in Landres, north-eastern France on Sunday night.
When the Maison des Lumières (House of Enlightenment) opened on Tuesday, workers noticed a smashed display case and raised the alarm, officials said. The coins were selected with "great expertise", a statement to French media from the local authority said.
It is the latest in a recent string of heists at cultural institutions across France.
The stolen coins date from between 1790 and 1840 and are part of the city's private collection, after being discovered in 2011 during renovation work at the building that now houses the museum, according to local media.
Last month, criminals broke into Paris's Natural History Museum, making off with six gold nuggets worth around €1.5m.
A Chinese national was arrested in Barcelona in connection with this raid while trying to dispose of some melted down gold, according to prosecutors. She was charged earlier this month and is being held in pre-trial detention.
Also in September, thieves stole two Chinese porcelain dishes and a vase with an estimated combined worth of €6.55m from the national porcelain museum in the central city of Limoges. The items are still missing and no arrests have been made.
"They're unsaleable on the art market. The pieces are too easily traceable anyway because they're so well listed," a ceramics expert told Le Parisien newspaper at the time.
The heist that has made headlines across the globe was the brazen daylight robbery of €88m worth of historic jewellery from the Louvre museum in Paris.
A gang disguised as workers used power-tools and a mechanical ladder to gain access to the first-floor Gallery of Apollo in the world's most visited museum shortly after it opened on Sunday.
The loot included a diamond and emerald necklace Emperor Napoleon gave to his wife, a tiara worn by Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, and several pieces previously owned by Queen Marie-Amelie.
Art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC museums across Europe could see a flurry of copycat raids in the coming months.
If someone can target the Louvre and escape with the French crown jewels, local thieves may think "let's try our nearest museum", he said.
Security is clearly a problem for many cultural institutions, he said, before adding that compared to a heavily protected jewellery store, a museum with lax security and unarmed guards is a ripe target for robbers.
The Louvre heist - as well as the other incidents - have raised concerns in France around the lax security at institutions that house some of its most prized treasures.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the heist, the Louvre's director Laurence des Cars told French senators on Wednesday that CCTV around the Louvre's perimeter was weak and "aging".
The only camera monitoring the exterior wall of the Louvre where the theives broke in was pointing away from the first-floor balcony that led to the gallery housing the jewels, she said.
"We failed these jewels," des Cars said, adding that no-one was protected from "brutal criminals - not even the Louvre".
A preliminary report found one in three rooms in the Louvre lacked CCTV and that its wider alarm system did not go off.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said security protocols had "failed", lamenting that the thieves being able to drive a modified truck up to the museum had left France with a "terrible image".
In the case of the gold stolen from the French Natural History Museum, the building's alarm and surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyber-attack, with the thieves apparently aware of this.
I had a message from Beckstones this week telling me I’d sold 3 watercolours at the art fair last weekend. They were also asking for more work before 1st December when they reduce opening times. We’ve managed to book a trip across there on 8th and 9th November to take my new collection. I needed to get some more paintings done for OCG to make the trip worthwhile, so I’ve painted like crazy this week and have done 6. I need to varnish, paint edges, string and pack them and get 2 framed ready to take next weekend! It’s all a bit of a rush and my studio is a complete bomb site. I’ve had to paint 3 in acrylics to make sure they dry in time. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the oils dry in time.
I also partially repainted a further 6 Northumberland paintings which I hope will go to Gallery 45 and painted a picture of Embleton Bay and the castle in snow to photograph for my Christmas card which will have to be printed this year.
It’s been a he’ll of a week and I’m knackered but it’s my Halloween Quiz tonight so I’ve got to go and do my face paint and get out the fancy dress…