Art News

Case of Los Angeles’ stolen Rembrandt drawing intrigues art world with ownership issue

LOS ANGELES, CA (AP).- On the surface it looked like an open-and-shut case: A pair of thieves drop by an art exhibition at the Ritz-Carlton and, while one distracts a curator, the other snatches a valuable, centuries-old Rembrandt drawing and bolts with it. Apparently finding the small pen-and-ink work by the Dutch master too hot to fence, the thieves have second thoughts. They abandon it, undamaged, at a church on the other side of town. Then the real mystery begins. Three weeks after recovering the framed, 11-by-6 inch drawing called “The Judgment,” authorities aren’t sure whether it really is a Rembrandt or if it even belongs to the art dealer that displayed it with other works at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey. “They have to show us something to prove that they own it, and they haven’t been able to do that,”