Why the Old Masters Would Have Loved (or Hated) the Louvre Heist

By now, you've probably heard about the jewelry heist at the Louvre—thieves made off with historic pieces in broad daylight, and the internet has been buzzing about it ever since. As I scrolled through the headlines this week, my first thought wasn't about security systems or insurance claims. It wasn't even about the loss of these historic objects—though experts say the pieces will likely be broken down, their artistry destroyed in favor of melting down the gold and gems.

My first thought was: 'What would Caravaggio think about this?'

I know, weird artist brain. But hear me out.

See, I spend my days working with the same techniques those Renaissance masters used 400 years ago—building canvases from scratch, layering underpainting and glazes, obsessing over light and shadow. I have studied their methods, and I've been refining them in my own work for nearly two decades. So when something big happens in the art world, I can't help but wonder: what would they make of all this?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the masters would have some pretty complicated feelings about that Louvre heist, or any museum heist for that matter. And those feelings might tell us something important about how we think about art today.

The Masters Painted for Patrons, Not Museums

Here's the thing: the whole concept of a "museum heist" would have been completely foreign to Renaissance artists.

Titian, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When Titian painted a portrait or Michelangelo accepted a commission for a chapel ceiling, they weren't creating work destined for a museum. Museums as we know them—public institutions preserving art for the masses—didn't really exist yet. Instead, these artists worked directly for wealthy patrons: dukes, cardinals, banking families, royalty.

The relationship was straightforward and personal. A patron commissioned a specific piece, the artist created it (often with plenty of back-and-forth), and the painting went straight into the patron's palace or private chapel. These weren't "priceless artifacts." They were commissioned works with negotiated prices, meant to be displayed in someone's home.

This is actually still how I work today.

When someone commissions a portrait or painting from me, we collaborate throughout the entire process. I send progress photos, we discuss details, and they're involved in decisions about composition and color. They're not buying a commodity off a gallery wall—they're commissioning something made specifically for their home, their family, their story.

It's the oldest model in art, and honestly? It's still the most meaningful.

My clients get to see how the layers are built up, watch their painting come to life, understand the technique behind it. And when they hang that finished piece in their home, it becomes part of their daily life—just like Titian's portraits hung in Renaissance palaces. Not behind glass in a museum, but lived with.

But here's where it gets interesting—the masters would probably have mixed feelings about what happened to their work after they were gone...

Would They Love Museums? (The Case FOR)

Let's start with the positive: I think the Renaissance masters would be pretty thrilled that we still care about their work 400-500 years later.

Mission accomplished, right?

Think about it: millions of people travel to see their paintings. Scholars dedicate their entire careers to studying their techniques. Museums spend enormous resources preserving every brushstroke. Their names—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer—are still household words centuries after they mixed their last batch of pigment.

And more than just fame, there's genuine reverence for the craft itself. Museums don't just display these paintings—they study them, restore them, protect them with climate control and UV filters and security systems. All that effort is ultimately about preserving the artistry, the skill, the incredible technique that went into creating these works.

As someone trained in Renaissance techniques, I have deep respect for this preservation work.

The underpainting, the glaze layers, the meticulous attention to how light moves across a face—these techniques take years to master. I'm still learning things about color mixing and layering that the masters figured out centuries ago. Museums ensure that this craftsmanship isn't lost to time, and they give people like me the chance to study the actual paintings up close.

La Novia Juda ("The Jewish Bride") – Rembrandt (1667)

I remember the first time I stood inches away from a Rembrandt at a museum during my RISD years. You can't learn this stuff from photographs or books—you need to see how thick he laid the paint in the highlights, how thin and translucent his shadows were, how he built dimension through dozens of careful layers. That painting taught me more in an hour than I could have learned in a month of classes.

So yes, I think the masters would appreciate that their work survived, that people still study their techniques, that we recognize the incredible skill they possessed.

But...

Or Would They Hate Museums? (The Case AGAINST)

Here's the uncomfortable part: I also think they'd be troubled by what their paintings have become.

Their work has been transformed from living, functional art into... specimens. Artifacts. Objects behind glass that crowds shuffle past, spending an average of 27 seconds per painting (yes, that's a real statistic).

Titian painted his portraits to hang in someone's home, to be lived with daily, to become part of a family's story. He expected people to sit with them, study them, develop a relationship with them over years. Now those same portraits are behind bulletproof glass with crowds jostling for selfies and checking items off their tourist lists.

The masters were craftsmen. They expected their work to be used, not just viewed.

And here's what might bother them most: somewhere along the way, we started caring more about the price tag than the painting itself. Sure, people still talk about beauty and technique and meaning—but when it comes to famous works, the conversation frequently starts with value. 'That Picasso sold for $179 million!' 'The Mona Lisa is insured for $870 million!” The monetary worth becomes inseparable from the artwork's identity.

The masters negotiated their fees like any craftsman, sure. But they also poured their souls into making something beautiful, something that would move people, tell a story, demonstrate their mastery of light and shadow and human emotion.

Now their paintings are discussed primarily in terms of monetary value, as if that's the most important thing about them. 

Which brings us back to museum heists:

The Louvre jewels were almost certainly stolen for their materials, not their artistry. Those pieces, crafted by master jewelers, will likely be broken down and melted—the craftsmanship destroyed, the gold and gems valued only by weight.

That's very different from, say, the Gardner Museum heist, where thieves stole paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer and those works have never been recovered. Those paintings can't be "broken down" for their materials—a stretched canvas and some dried oil paint aren't worth much. The only reason to steal them is because someone wants to possess the art itself.

The empty frames of the two stolen Rembrandt paintings at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. A Lady and Gentleman in Black on the left and The Storm on the Sea of Galilee on the right.

In both cases, would the masters be horrified that thieves stole historic pieces? Absolutely—theft is theft, and these objects have deep historical significance beyond their monetary worth.

But in the case of the Gardner Museum heist, would they also secretly appreciate that someone valued these objects enough to risk everything for them? Not for a photo op or a quick museum walkthrough, but to actually possess them?

I think there might be a tiny part of them that would understand that impulse. At least the thieves saw these pieces as objects worth having, worth holding, worth the risk. Not just as items on a checklist or numbers in an insurance policy.

What This Teaches Us About Original Art Today

This is where things get personal for me, because this tension—between art as precious object and art as lived-with experience—is something I navigate every single day in my studio.

We live in an age where you can print the Mona Lisa on a t-shirt, a tote bag, or a coffee mug. You can pull up a high-resolution image of any famous painting on your phone in seconds. So why do original paintings still matter?

Here's what I've learned, both from studying the masters and from creating commissioned work for nearly two decades:

An original painting is irreplaceable because of what it is, not just what it looks like.

When you stand in front of an original oil painting, you're looking at the artist's actual hand at work. You can see the texture of the brushstrokes, the places where the paint is thick and built up, the thin translucent glazes in the shadows. You can see the artist's decisions, their corrections, the way they solved problems as they worked.

No photograph, no print, no reproduction can capture that. They can show you the image, but they can't show you the object—the physicality of paint on canvas, the way light moves across actual texture, the subtle variations in color that happen when you mix pigments by hand.

In my studio, I still build my canvases the traditional way—stretching the linen myself, preparing the surface with layers of gesso, creating a detailed underpainting before I ever touch color. Then come the glaze layers, sometimes a dozen or more, each one adding depth and luminosity that you simply cannot achieve any other way.

This process can't be rushed, and it can't be faked.

When you commission an original oil painting from me—or from any artist working in traditional techniques—you're getting something that exists nowhere else in the world. I mix each color specifically for your piece. I make hundreds of tiny decisions about value and temperature and saturation. I build layers over days and weeks, letting each one dry before adding the next. And I spend just as much energy—maybe more—on the emotional core of the piece. I'm constantly mulling over how to capture the story they want told, what feeling should emanate from the canvas. That internal work happens long before and long after I'm physically at the easel.

The painting that results isn't just an image—it's a record of all those hours, all those decisions, all that attention. It's a physical object that will exist long after we're both gone, just like those Renaissance paintings are still around 500 years later.

This is why my commission process is built around collaboration. I work closely with clients from the very beginning—understanding what they want, discussing composition and color, making sure we're aligned on the vision before I start. They're part of the creative journey, even if they're not in my studio watching paint dry (literally). It's that direct artist-patron relationship the masters knew—that personal connection to work being created specifically for them.

And honestly? It's the best part of my job.

The Most Valuable Art Isn't in Museums

Here's what I've come to believe: maybe we've been thinking about "valuable art" all wrong.

Yes, the art in places like the Louvre or the Gardner Museum are historically significant. Yes, they're worth protecting and preserving. Yes, they represent centuries of artistic achievement.

But the most valuable art? The art that actually matters in our daily lives?

Commissioned oil portrait painting by Katie Peña using Old Master techniques

That's the painting hanging in your grandmother's house that you've looked at since childhood. The portrait of your late dog that makes you tear up every time you walk past it. The landscape your grandfather painted that's technically "amateur" but captures a specific moment in time that will never exist again. The mural on your city's downtown wall that transforms a boring commute into something beautiful.

That art is priceless—not because of what it would sell for at auction, but because of what it means.

Here in Raleigh, I've watched our art community thrive precisely because it's not centralized in museums behind glass. It's in galleries on Glenwood South where you can actually talk to artists. It's in murals throughout the warehouse district that anyone can see, anytime, for free. It's in studios that open their doors for First Friday, letting people meet the actual humans making the work.

It's accessible. It's part of the community's fabric. And most importantly—it's ours.

Raleigh has the kind of art scene I want to be part of—one that understands what the Renaissance masters knew instinctively: art is most powerful when it's woven into the community, when it's made for specific people and places, when it becomes part of the daily landscape rather than something cordoned off and untouchable.

Likewise, when I create a commissioned portrait for a client, it becomes part of their story, their home, their everyday life—exactly how Titian's patrons experienced their commissioned portraits.

That can't be stolen either, not really. The painting might be a physical object, but its value lives in the relationship between the art and the people who live with it.

So What Would the Masters Think?

Would the Renaissance masters have wanted their work locked away in a museum, guarded like treasure, stolen in heists that make international news?

I think they'd have mixed feelings.

They'd probably love that we still care about their work centuries later, that we study their techniques, that we recognize the incredible skill and care they poured into every brushstroke.

But they might also wonder when we started caring more about the security system than the painting itself. More about the insurance value than the image. More about protecting art than experiencing it.

Here's what I do know: if you could bring Caravaggio or Titian or Rembrandt back for a day and give them a choice between spending it at the Louvre, looking at their paintings behind glass, or spending it in a working studio watching an artist use their techniques to create something new for an excited patron...

I think I know which one they'd choose.

They'd want to be where the work is still happening. Where paint is still being mixed, canvases are still being stretched, and artists are still solving the same problems they solved 400 years ago—how to capture light, how to suggest emotion, how to make a flat surface feel dimensional and alive.

Which is exactly where I'm heading now. I have a commission deadline approaching, and these glaze layers won't paint themselves. The technique that Titian used in the 1500s still works today—but only if you actually put in the hours.

And that's worth more than all the museum heists in the world.

Interested in working with Katie?

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Interested in commissioning original artwork—the kind that's made specifically for you, built with traditional Renaissance techniques, and becomes part of your family's story? I'd love to talk with you about your project.

Or if you just want to chat about Renaissance painting techniques and whether Caravaggio was definitely a little unhinged (he was), you can reach me at katie@katiepena.com.

-Katie 🎨