Boston Museum Gets Feeler on Stolen Masters

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum said today it had received a ransom inquiry for a dozen priceless works stolen from the unique gallery in the biggest art heist in U.S. history.

The FBI, meanwhile, was expected to release composite pictures later in the day of the two thieves who robbed the Gardner in a daring pre-dawn heist Sunday, cutting two Rembrandts from their frames, and walking off with a Vermeer--one of the fewer than 40 known to exist.

Museum Director Anne Hawley told reporters the ransom inquiry was relayed by a woman in the art world whose work she was familiar with.

She said the woman, whom she would not identify, had received an anonymous call from someone who claimed to know the whereabouts of the stolen artworks.

“The call was from out of the city and was from an individual who claimed to have had an anonymous phone call from someone who knew where the works were and what the amount of the reward was,” Hawley said outside the museum’s cordoned-off Dutch Room, from which five works were stolen.

The call was made an hour before the museum announced Tuesday that a $1-million reward, underwritten by the international auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, would be offered for the safe return of the artworks.

Hawley said she had “no way of knowing” if the tip would pan out. Many calls have been received by the FBI and the museum and “every tip is followed up,” she said.

The museum also disclosed that a 13th item had been discovered missing--a gilt eagle finial from the pole of a silk Napoleonic flag.

None of the works were insured for theft.

The museum, which reopened today for the first time since the theft, was robbed by two men posing as Boston police officers who persuaded two guards to let them in. The guards were then sprayed with Mace, handcuffed and gagged.

In the Dutch Room, blank spaces could be seen today where Vermeer’s “The Concert,” and Rembrandt’s “Lady and Gentleman in Black” and “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” his only known seascape, once hung.