Isabella Stewart Gardner Musuem's Stolen Finial

When we talk about the Gardner Museum heist, we usually start with the paintings. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Degas get all the attention, and for good reason. But one of the 13 stolen objects isn't a painting at all. It's a small bronze eagle, about as tall as a water bottle.

What is a finial?

A finial is the decoration at the very top of a pole, a post, or a roof. You've probably seen them on curtain rods, fence posts, and flagpoles. This one is a gilded bronze eagle with its wings spread.  French metalworkers made it around 1813–1814. It once sat on top of the flagpole for a silk flag belonging to Napoleon's Imperial Guard, the soldiers who served closest to the French emperor.

Napoleon loved the eagle as a symbol. He borrowed the symbol from ancient Rome, where soldiers carried eagle standards into battle. Losing your regiment's eagle was a terrible disgrace, so soldiers protected these little bronze birds with their lives.

Isabella Stewart Gardner hung the flag and its eagle in her house on Beacon Street in Boston. When she built her museum, she gave them a spot in the Short Gallery on the second floor, where the framed flag still hangs today.

What the thieves tried to do

Here's the part that makes us scratch our heads. Investigators found that the thieves started unscrewing the frame that held the flag to the wall. They seem to have wanted the whole thing. Partway through, they gave up and left some of the screws in place. Instead, they took the eagle from the top of the pole and walked away with it.

Why bother with a ten-inch eagle when they had just left the room with Rembrandts? Nobody knows for sure. Some people think the gold color fooled them, and they believed the eagle was solid gold. Others think one of the thieves just liked it. The eagle is gilded, which means it has a thin layer of gold on the outside, but it's bronze underneath.

A reward of its own

The museum offers a reward for information that leads to the return of the stolen art. The eagle has its own extra reward of $100,000, just for the eagle. That makes it one of the most wanted birds in the world.

Discussion Questions: 

• Why do you think the thieves gave up on the flag but kept the eagle?

• Napoleon picked the eagle as his symbol. If you could pick an animal to stand for you, what would it be?

• Where have you seen finials in your own neighborhood? Look at fences, lampposts, and rooftops this week.