Vincent van Gogh once said, “The diseases that we civilized people labour under most are melancholy and pessimism.” Perhaps the COVID-19 disease should be added to that list, after thieves laboured through a coronavirus lockdown in the Netherlands to steal one of van Gogh’s paintings from an art museum.
The artwork was stolen Monday from the Singer Laren museum outside of Amsterdam, according to Netherlands Police. The thieves smashed a glass door to get into the museum at around 3:15 a.m., police said.
The break-in triggered an alarm but the thieves had already escaped by the time police showed up. The painting was called Spring Garden, the vicarage garden in Nuenen in the spring.