Preying on Italian Churches — artnews.com

Italy’s embarrassment of riches—with 50 officially recognized sites, it tops the UNESCO World Heritage List—has long made the country particularly vulnerable to looting. Nevertheless, heritage heists have declined in recent years. In 2013, they dropped by one-quarter, to 676 from the previous year’s 891. The drop can be attributed to the fact that museums are more closely guarded than in the past, and stolen objects offered for sale at auctions, art fairs, galleries, or online can be identified more easily thanks to the massive data bank maintained by the art squad of the Carabinieri paramilitary police. This electronic resource contains almost six million images of looted objects, including some that have been missing for decades. A new smartphone app, called “iTPC,” also created by the Carabinieri, now connects to the data bank, so potential buyers, from individuals to auction houses, don’t have to be afraid of unwittingly acquiring stolen works.

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