When the Mona Lisa was stolen by a museum worker back in 1911, the global attention it got turned it into one of the most famous works of art in history. While it was recovered barely two years later, many other masterpieces by renowned artists remain missing to this day. Quite a few of them were taken during one particularly-famous heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, when art thieves made off with paintings valued at over $500 million.
10. Landscape With An Obelisk, Govert Flinck
Originally thought to be a Rembrandt, Landscape with an Obelisk is actually an artwork by the Dutch artist Govert Flinck. It’s an oil painting on wood measuring 21 by 28 inches, portraying a stormy landscape with an obelisk, a fallen tree trunk, and a miniature man on horseback.
This artwork gained global popularity when it was stolen – along with several other pieces – during Boston’s infamous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in 1990. Two men disguised as policemen managed to break the museum’s security, overpowered the guards, and stole 13 artworks, including Landscape with an Obelisk. The will of the museum’s founder demanded that the hanging order of the pictures in the museum remains unchanged, which is why one can still see the empty frame that once housed the masterpiece.
9. Just Judges, Jan Van Eyck
The Ghent Altarpiece is a set of panels created by Jan Van Eyck and his brother Hubert. One of them, the Just Judges panel, has been missing since 1934, thanks to a heist at the St. Bavo’s Cathedral where it was originally placed.
The crime was discovered by a sexton at the Cathedral, who was the first person to notice the missing panels. The thieves had forced the chapel’s door and removed the panels by dismantling their iron hinges, complete with a note that claimed that the theft was revenge for the WW1 Treaty of Versailles.
The police investigation initially revealed little, except the fact that the thief operated under the alias D.U.A. It got a bit more interesting when a ransom demand of one million Belgian francs was sent to the bishop of Ghent, though it was later found to be a diversion. While negotiations with D.U.A. led to the return of the other missing panel, John the Baptist, the Just Judges panel remains stolen and missing even today.
8. Storm On The Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt
In 1990, Rembrandt’s 1633 masterpiece, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, was another masterpiece stolen during the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. As we mentioned above, it was one of the largest art heists in US history, when two people posing as police officers gained entry to the museum, immobilized the security staff, and made off with 13 known artworks.
The thieves took many measures to seize these works, first cutting them from their frames and then removing them from the walls like professionals. Despite extensive investigations by the FBI and a $5 million reward offered for leads, the painting remains missing to this day. One theory suggests that local mobsters were behind the heist and wanted to sell the artworks on the black market. Till now, however, law enforcement agencies have explored more than 30,000 leads to little success.
7. Poppy Flowers, Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers – also sometimes referred to as Vase and Flowers – has been stolen more than once in history, and it remains missing to this day. Created in 1887, it depicts vibrant yellow flowers with red blooms contrasted against a dark background. After the artist’s death, the masterpiece made its way from Paris to Cairo, where it became a part of the prestigious Mohamed Khalil Museum collection.
The first theft occurred in 1977 when it was moved between palaces, with little information about the culprits, though it was eventually recovered in Kuwait. Poppy Flowers was stolen again in August, 2010, when the thief – or thieves – managed to cut it from its frame unnoticed in broad daylight. The heist exposed many glaring problems with the museum’s safety mechanisms, as only a fraction of the security cameras were operational at the time, with all of its alarms inactive. With a current estimated value of around $50 million, the painting’s current whereabouts remain unknown.
6. View Of Auvers-sur-Oise, Cézanne
Now valued at about $5.5 million AUD, View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Paul Cézanne was stolen from the Ashmolean Museum on December 31, 1999. It was taken during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Oxford, as the thieves took advantage of the festivities to break into the museum. They climbed the scaffolding around the museum’s library extensions, broke a skylight, and deployed a smoke bomb to block the security cameras, as they removed the painting from its frame and escaped using a rope ladder. Although the alarms worked well enough, security guards initially thought that they were caused by a fire and not theft.
View of Auvers-sur-Oise was the museum’s only Cézanne, and surprisingly, nothing else was stolen from the gallery, which also housed pieces by artists like Renoir, Rodin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. According to theories, the specific nature of this crime suggests that the painting was stolen on demand, as its fame and limited marketability would make selling it on any market almost possible. Despite extensive investigations by British and international art crime specialists, however, the painting remains missing even today.
5. Nativity With St. Francis And St. Lawrence, Caravaggio
Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence was painted by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio in 1609. The artwork portrays an infant Christ on a bed of straw surrounded by saints and shepherds, along with an ox watching over him as an angel reaches down from heaven with a banner reading ‘Gloria’.
The painting was stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Sicily, on October 18, 1969. Despite extensive investigations and theories about its ultimate fate, the painting’s current location remains a mystery. It is now valued at around $20 million and is listed among the FBI’s top 10 art crimes of all time.
Over the years, many accounts and rumors about the painting have emerged around the world, ranging from being burned, abandoned, or cut into pieces. Some believe that it remains intact and hidden in Sicily, possibly being used as collateral in drug deals.
4. Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud
While most people know about the renowned artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, not many are aware of their 25-years-long friendship that began in the mid-1940s. They lived and collaborated in the backdrop of London’s bohemian scene, and were known for regularly scrutinizing and criticizing each other’s works, despite their contrasting artistic styles.
Lucian Freud painted a portrait of Francis Bacon in 1952 on a small copper canvas, which was then stolen during an exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1988. Despite Freud’s extensive efforts to find it, including a ‘Wanted’ poster campaign in Berlin, the painting remains missing to this day.
3. Danish Jubilee Egg, Peter Carl Fabergé
The Danish Jubilee Egg was one of the six missing Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs, originally created by Peter Carl Fabergé for the Russian royal family. They were commissioned as Easter gifts from Russian Tsars to their wives, and out of the 52 eggs Fabergé created, only 46 are accounted for today, with the remaining six still missing in the wild.
According to the only known description of the Danish Jubilee Egg, it was an ‘egg with blue and white enamel in gold mounted on columns with lions, and an elephant above; in the middle a screen with a portrait of the Danish King and Queen, applied with precious stones’. Crafted in 1903, it symbolized the highest order of the Danish Kingdom, and the stand within the egg held a two-sided portrait of the Danish King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Hesse-Kassel. It was last seen at the Gatchina Palace in July 1917, though its fate after the events of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia remains unknown.
2. Portrait Of A Young Man, Raphael
While we don’t have a precise date for its creation, Portrait of a Young Man was painted by the Renaissance master Raphael some time around 1513 and 1514. Once a part of the Princes Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland – alongside masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt – It now remains missing for over 75 years thanks to the Nazis.
According to some theories, the masterpiece was taken by Hans Frank – the Nazi official in charge of the Polish General Government during the war – though it’s not clear if he kept it or sold it off to another private collection. Its value potentially exceeds $100 million in today’s money, making it one of the most valuable missing works of art in history. Till today, the frame it sat in at the Princes Czartoryski Museum remains empty as a tribute to the famous artwork.
1. The Concert, Vermeer
Easily the single most expensive missing work of art in history, Vermeer’s The Concert was another casualty of the infamous 1990 heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Painted by Johannes Vermeer sometime between 1663 and 1666, it was a classic example of Vermeer’s portrayal of domestic scenes during the social life of that era, depicting a sitting room with three figures engaged in creating music.
The value of The Concert extends beyond its monetary worth, as it was also the first major work of art acquired by the museum’s founder, Isabella Stewart Gardner. The missing painting – valued at over $200 million in today’s currency – is still the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation. The Gardner Museum continues to offer a large reward in exchange for information leading to the recovery of all of its stolen artworks, including The Concert.