Arthur Brand, a self-proclaimed art detective, has recovered a trove of documents stolen from the Netherlands’s National Archives in 2015, the Art Newspaper reported on Thursday.
The 25 objects recovered include documents listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Those documents relate to the Dutch East India Company and include a report of the company’s first meeting in 1602, a report detailing a 1700 visit from the company to Mughal India’s Emperor Aurangzeb, and a ship log by 17th century Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter.
According to Brand, those works were discovered after a person clearing out an ill relative’s attic found the box. After showing it to a former college history professor, the professor urged the person to contact Brand.
Brand is well known in the field for a series of high-profile recoveries, including that of a Christian relic known as the Precious Blood of Christ in 2022 and paintings by van Gogh, Picasso, and others in 2023.
“They sent me some pictures and I saw immediately that this was a treasure,” Brand told the Art Newspaper.
Brand took posession of the trove on the condition that he would contact the Dutch police and attempt to return them to their proper owner, the National Archives. As Brand told the Art Newspaper, the National Archives was not even aware the objects had been stolen
In a statement to the NL Times, the institution said that it knew some of the documents were missing, but confirmed that it was unaware they’d been stolen.
“We knew some of them were missing, but that could have been due to any number of reasons. For example, a document could have been accidentally returned to the wrong place,” a spokesperson said. “We manage more than 145 kilometres of archives, over 15 million photographs, and 300,000 maps and drawings. With such numbers, it is impossible to have a complete inventory of all the documents.”
