where’s Wellington? (the Duke of…)
Since our last post, an interesting related twist in the art world has come to our attention. Fifty years to the day (August 21, 1961) of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, Goya’s “Portrait of the Duke of Wellington” was taken from London’s National Gallery. The thief, Kempton Bunton, was outraged by the British government’s spending £140,000 to keep the painting from leaving Britain and falling into the clutches of an upstart American collector. Just three weeks after its gallery debut, it was lifted and a ransom note delivered demanding the government pay for BBC licensing fees for the elderly.
Shortly after the painting went missing James Bond’s first film “Dr. No” was released. In that film is a little-known reference to the missing Goya. In the scene where Bond visits the Doctor’s Caribbean home, he spots a painting on an easel, the famous missing Goya and briefly admires it.
A scene that film trivia dreams are made of!
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