Bronze cover of Salvador Dalí's “Book of the Apocalypse” stolen from museum in Issoire

A French museum has once again fallen victim to a brazen theft. On the night of Sunday, the cover of a book created by Salvador Dalí was stolen from a small private museum of modern art in the town of Issoire in central France. The cover weighs around 150 kilograms, is cast in bronze and is adorned with precious stones, shells and cutlery.

The cover belongs to the "Book of the Apocalypse", that is, an illustrated edition of the Revelation of St John the Divine. The French publisher Joseph Forêt conceived it in 1958 as a collective project involving 14 artists and writers, among them Jean Cocteau, Bernard Buffet and Jean Giono. The book's one hundred and fifty large vellum leaves were kept separately from the cover and were not damaged.

The police do not yet know how the thieves carried the cover out