I can understand stealing art, but not destroying it

Faced with Caravaggio's 'Conversion of St Paul' in an unguarded museum, I had the dizzying idea of just walking out with it

The Temple of Diana at Ephesus is remembered now for two things; that it was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and for the manner of its destruction. It was burnt down by a man called Herostratus; and when, afterwards, they asked him why he had done something so wicked, he answered that he had done it so that his name would be remembered.

Well, Herostratus succeeded, but there are some acts so wicked that their perpetrators ought to hope and pray that their deeds should be quickly forgotten. Last week's news report from France was so incredible that you had to read it two or three times to make sure that you'd quite understood it. For several years, a French waiter called Stephane Breitwieser had been travelling around Europe, acquiring works of art in an informal way, simply by lifting them off the walls of provincial museums.

His haul was spectacular; by the time he was arrested for stealing a bugle from the museum in Lucerne, he had piled up 172 different works of art in the attic of his mother's house in Strasbourg. These included some works of very high quality – a Watteau from Montpellier and one of Boucher's Sleeping Shepherds – as well as a lot of stuff which had quite simply caught M Breitwieser's eye.

He was able to be so successful because provincial museums in Europe rarely have elaborate security systems, or even enough guards to patrol the rooms. Everyone knows this to be true – I must admit that once in Messina, faced with Caravaggio's Conversion of St Paul in a completely unguarded museum, I had dizzying ideas of just walking out with it under my arm. Breitwieser acted on the impulse.

That, I think, is the part of the story which, even if we deplore it, we can understand. It's the sequel that is truly psychopathic, and it is almost impossible to understand what motives come into play now. His mother, Mireille Breitwieser, only discovered what Stephane had been doing on his arrest. Infuriated, she went up to the attic, discovered the extraordinary treasures he had been amassing, and destroyed the lot.

The Boucher was cut up, and went into her kitchen waste-disposal unit; anything smashable was smashed, and thrown into the canal; paintings slashed and burnt; everything gone, destroyed, never to be seen again. Well, Mme Breitwieser has had her revenge. If there is a hell, I hope she burns there for eternity.

Now go to the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square, in central London. There, you will see several Watteaus. This morning, direct your attention to Voulez-vous triompher des belles? It is a little painting, no more than a foot high; in the foreground, under a classical term, half-buried in a lush overgrown forest, a zany fellow in a mask is scaring a plump beauty. It isn't serious; behind, five friends, fantastically dressed, are flirting, chatting, smiling in the late-afternoon forest sun. It means almost nothing; it is just silk, and sun, and woodland, on a piece of canvas 14 inches by 11, a dream of pleasure, three hundred years old.

There is not so much of Watteau left to us; he died when he was 37. His paintings are miraculous; his drawings are unique, and among that special body of work, the red-chalk drawings have always been loved above anything else the age produced. And this week there is one less, because a silly old cow in Strasbourg got cross with her son, and fed the Deux Hommes which was once in a museum in Montpellier to her waste disposal unit.

Perhaps we want to own art so much because at some level, we sense that we never truly own art. Whenever we hear of one of these acts of destruction, the response is always the same; you may have bought it, but it is not yours to dispose of as you wish. Sutherland's portrait of Churchill was not Clementine Churchill's to destroy; van Gogh's portrait of Dr Gachet was not the Japanese collector Saito's to burn on his funeral pyre; Michael Landy destroyed all his possessions in the course of a work of conceptual art, but the painting by Gary Hume which was ground up was no more his to destroy than his girlfriend was his to kill.

Art passes through our hands; we have it for a time; we are entrusted with it; and any betrayal of that trust strikes us as a vast wickedness. The story of sad, demented Mme Breitwieser reminds me of something; it is the story of those men who, wishing to revenge themselves on their ex-wives, take an axe and kill their children, crying "You see! You see!" among the appalling debris. Yes, we see. It is something we would rather forget.

p.hensher@independent.co.uk