Art: Watteau Snipped

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In the event of a daylight air raid on Paris, employes of the Louvre department store will stream across the Rue de Rivoli, not into shelter but into the Louvre Museum. Their job: to help the museum staff remove, pack and convey to safety the world's vastest collection of art. Obviously unable to do it unaided are the museum's guards, who number 405 and have 900 rooms to cover.

Last week it looked to Parisians as if the Louvre staff needed a little augmentation in time of peace as well. About ten minutes of four one afternoon the guard who patrols the new French room on the second floor found himself staring at a blank space on the wall. When he had passed by 20 minutes before it had been occupied by Antoine Watteau's L'lndifférent, a tiny (10¼ inches by 7⅞ inches) painting of a carefree youth in a rose colored cape and blue doublet.

There have been no attempted thefts at the Louvre since 1911, when an Italian workman walked off with the Mona Lisa. It took the guard several minutes to work himself out of his daze. While the alarms sounded and the detectives hustled through the crowd he remembered a young man who had been copying the painting, a young woman who carried a folding camp stool easily big enough to hide it. Both had disappeared. Valued at anything from $80,000 up, the little picture had been snipped clean from the wires that held it —loosely, to make rescue easy in case of fire.

Masterpieces are seldom stolen for love.

After the Mona Lisa vanished in 1911, a new confidence game flourished for a while: selling the "genuine" Mona Lisa to rich suckers who were unable to squawk when they found themselves stuck with copies instead of stolen goods. French police last week expected the same thing to happen with L'Indifférent, put a close watch on dubious picture dealers, airports and trains. The Mona Lisa was gone for two years before they found her in the thief's home in Florence.