In September 1904, the young Cubist painter Pablo Picasso attended the opening of a new room at the Louvre that featured Iberian art from the museum’s permanent collection. As a proud Spaniard, Picasso was thrilled by the ancient art he saw on display, sculptures that had an air of the simplified abstraction of Cycladic figurines and yet were millennia old, and were the original, most authentic art of Picasso’s homeland.
The statues were not artistic masterpieces, and yet they would be stolen. It was noted at the time of their disappearance that they were of no real financial value, roughly carved and of basic materials (primarily limestone), nor were they particularly rare.
