> the number of people willing to purchase a black market painting worth ~$millions is probably like a dozen

You only need one.

With something like this I imagine you could hold on to it for years or even a lifetime waiting for the right connection to come along. Maybe some of them are even commissioned or pre-sold.

I can’t say I know anyone with stolen art, but over my lifetime I’ve known people across a range of wealth classes who got a thrill out of acquiring and owning something that was risky contraband.

If you can wait out the statute of limitations you can of course sell it. It seems that in France that is not a thing in stolen art from a public collection

One would think most jobs are "by order" and thus the customer comes before the risk