The Rembrandt taken from Stockholm

On the evening of Friday 22 December 2000, about five minutes before the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm closed, one man walked into the entrance lobby and aimed a submachine gun at the guard. The Guardian and the BBC report that two others went upstairs and took three small paintings from the walls. They were Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait and two works by Renoir, Conversation and Young Parisian. No one was hurt. The Rembrandt is signed 1630. It is painted in oil on copper and measures 15.5 by 12 centimetres. The museum bought it in 1956 with a gift from its friends’ association. None of the three paintings was insured, according to the BBC.

The robbers had prepared their escape. Police were told of car fires nearby as the alarm sounded, and AFP reported that the robbers set several parked cars on fire. Wire reports say spikes were thrown on the road to slow police cars. The robbers left in a small motorboat moored by the museum. Police found it about two hours later on the shore of Lake Mälaren, in the south of the city. It was empty. On 2 January 2001 the Guardian reported a ransom demand for the pictures, made through a lawyer. The police did not pay. On 5 April 2001 narcotics officers on a drugs raid in central Stockholm found Conversation. The BBC reports that three people were arrested and that the police had not been looking for the painting.

On 27 July 2001 the Stockholm district court jailed eight men and acquitted five others, including a criminal lawyer. Two Swedes received 6.5 and 6 years for armed robbery. Aftonbladet later named Alexander Petrov as the main man behind the raid. It reported that he was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to about eight years. Sources differ slightly on the exact term. In December 2005 Aftonbladet reported that he said he was innocent and wanted a retrial.

The Rembrandt came back through a sting. The Los Angeles Times reports that the FBI had recovered Young Parisian in the spring of 2005 and kept it secret. A man arrested on drug charges in the United States had offered to help return the Rembrandt, the Swedish Supreme Court later recorded. On 15 September 2005, in a hotel room in Copenhagen, an FBI agent posed as a buyer. Danish police filmed the meeting and arrested four men. The painting was undamaged and still in its original frame. It hung again at the Nationalmuseum on 21 September. Young Parisian was returned on 20 February 2006. It has a large scratch in the varnish, which the museum says can be repaired.

The Copenhagen cases ended without punishment. In December 2005 the district court convicted three of the four men of aggravated receiving of stolen goods and acquitted the fourth. It cut their sentences because of police entrapment. In 2006 the Court of Appeal upheld the convictions but gave no penalty. On 28 December 2007 the Supreme Court dismissed the charges against all three. It found that police provocation had undermined their right to a fair trial. The sources consulted do not say who ordered the raid or where the paintings were kept for five years.

All three paintings are now back in the museum. Its collection pages, checked on 22 October 2026, place the Rembrandt in its seventeenth-century rooms and Young Parisian in the 1870 to 1900 room.