5-Minute History of Art Theft during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

From Art Info, The Secret History of Art (Noah Charney on Art Crimes and Art Historical Mysteries): 5-Minute History of Art Theft during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

Though largely a war fought between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Years’ War featured an infamous incident of art looting when the phenomenally rich artistic and scientific collections of Rudolf II of Prague were stolen and scattered throughout Europe. While the war led to the inhibition of Habsburg supremacy, the decentralization of the Holy Roman Empire, and a decline in the influence of the Catholic Church, historians have noted that it exemplified Cato the Elder’s phrase bellum se ipsum alet, “the war will feed itself.” The major governmental powers behind the Thirty Years’ War were nearly bankrupted by disease, famine, and the cost of fighting. This resulted in unpaid troops who took out their hunger and frustration on the land that they passed. Troops began to ravage and loot any territory in their path, using extortion and other means to essentially self-fund the campaign. This problem manifested itself on a large scale, with army divisions resorting to such tactics, but also on a soldier-by-soldier basis.

Thirty Years’ War and the Sack of Prague (1618-1648)
When Sweden intervened in the war and overtook Prague in 1648, the marvelous collections of Rudolf II were stolen. Swedish troops sacked Prague Castle on 26 July 1648 and hauled the majority of the collection back to Sweden, where it was absorbed into the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. Queen Christina would eventually be exiled from Sweden and while the majority of her collection remained there, she brought a large number of works with her: 70-80 paintings, of which 25 were portraits of her friends and family, which she had bought legitimately and at least 50 paintings that had been stolen from Prague.

This would prove important to the history of legitimate art collecting, as the best pieces from Queen Christina’s catalogue, 123 paintings forming its core, were passed on to the Duke of Orleans after her death. The sale of the Orleans Collection, primarily to settle the gambling debts of Louis Philippe d’Orleans, took place over several years in the 1790s. It represented the first of the great sales of aristocratic collections, many others of which would follow in a new era when the aristocracy could no longer support themselves in their traditional ways, through feudal service, and had to sell off the trappings of their nobility, art and castles and titles, in order to survive.

This directly gave rise to the art trade in the modern sense: not of kings and clergy commissioning large-scale works, but of nouveau riches merchants and industrialists now able to afford what the aristocracy no longer can. Scores of paintings that had been looted from Prague a century and a half earlier were sold at this time, including Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky Way, bought for 50 guineas in 1800 and now at the National Gallery in London.