Lost Art: The Stories of Missing Masterpieces

Imagine you could visit a Museum of Lost Art. If this imaginary museum contained just the artwork we knew was lost—whether from theft, purposeful destruction, vandalism, war, or the forces of nature—it would still contain more masterpieces than those in all of the world’s current museums combined. Among its many treasures, it would hold:

• The lost scrolls of the Library of Alexandria;
• The looted antiquities of the Iraq Museum;
• Religious art smashed during the Reformation;
• Countless treasures stolen by the Nazis; and
• The single largest art heist of modern times.

In Lost Art: The Stories of Missing Masterpieces, art historian and art crime expert Noah Charney guides you through just such an imaginary museum. In 12 fascinating lectures accompanied by stunning images, you will hear the stories behind the theft and/or destruction of some of the world’s most famous pieces of art. From the earthquake that felled the Colossus of Rhodes in 226 BCE to the Taliban’s iconoclastic destruction of the 500-year-old Buddha Statues at Bamiyan in the 21st century, no one knows how many great works of art have been destroyed or lost throughout history. Only very few have ever resurfaced.

We can only imagine how the artists of those works might feel. To have struggled, sometimes for years or even decades, to produce a work with painstaking clarity—having used a paintbrush with only one bristle, in at least one case—only to have it lost or destroyed. Or consider Pythius and Satyros, the Greeks who built the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, only to have it ruined by earthquakes. And what about the architects of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon … or did they ever really exist? You’ll be fascinated and surprised by these many stories of lost art.

What We Don’t Know

In Lost Art: The Stories of Missing Masterpieces, you’ll hear some familiar names, such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Goya, and you might recognize many of their works. Although we don’t know how many of their works have been lost or stolen, many have been documented as such. Overall, we have no way of knowing about the thousands and thousands of pieces of art that were destroyed or stolen without any record of their existence to pass on.

And then there was Michelangelo, who purposefully destroyed many of his own drawings. In his time and place, there was great cultural significance placed on sprezzatura—the concept that what you do should come to you easily—which, in his case, included creating some of the most significant art the world had ever seen. Consequently, he burned up scores of his work-in-progress drawings into the fire, leaving behind only what he considered to be perfection.

As you will see, the destruction and loss of art can be the result of many factors, both intentional and simply inevitable. Noah will take you through discussions about dozens of artworks and historical sites whose whereabouts are completely unknown at this time, including:

• Paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The biggest art heist in modern history occurred in Boston on March 18, 1990, when 13 paintings were stolen from the Gardner Museum. The FBI values the works by Vermeer and Manet, among others, at $500 million. Some believe the mafia was involved. The museum is still asking the public for leads.
• Nativity by Caravaggio. One of the most notorious and long-running unsolved thefts of 1969, this Caravaggio painting was stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, Sicily, and it has continued to be on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Art list since. Current thinking is that the Sicilian mafia was behind the theft and still has possession of it.
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon. These ancient gardens are considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, although their actual location has remained elusive through the 21st century. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were noted for the beauty of their plants, their architecture, and their engineering; however, no one can find them, not even a reliable trace. Were they simply a legend?

What We Do Know

The US Department of Justice has ranked art crime as the third-highest grossing criminal trade, behind only the drugs and arms trades. And in Italy alone, more than 20,000 pieces of art are annually reported as stolen. In this course, Noah will highlight some of the very few works that have been recovered, including:

• Goya’s Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery in London by Kempton Bunton, an older man who was furious that British pensioners were forced to pay for a license to watch television—a fee many could not afford. In a Robin Hood-style effort, he sent a series of ransom notes to raise the money to buy the licenses himself. Bunton eventually returned the painting anonymously and turned himself in.
• Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by an Italian handyman and two compatriots who believed the painting should reside in Italy, not France. Two years after the theft, the handyman tried to sell the work to a Florentine art dealer who promised to keep the painting safe in Italy. Instead, he called the police. It was only after the painting’s theft and return that the Mona Lisa became the globally famous piece it is today.
• Edvard Munch’s The Scream was stolen in 1994 from Norway’s National Gallery in Oslo, while everyone’s attention was on the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics 125 miles away in Lillehammer. The thief was eventually caught, and the painting returned.

Acts of Nature

Due to the fragile nature of many art pieces, time and the environment are its natural enemies. Even artworks made of stone and metal cannot withstand the elements, indefinitely. You’ll consider works that have been affected by the progress of time and the vicissitudes of nature, such as:

• The Artwork at Pompeii. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, almost 2,000 people were killed. The eruption also smothered uncounted paintings, frescoes, mosaics, and other artworks. Ironically, much of the artwork that archaeologists have revealed at Pompeii in recent years would have been lost during the intervening centuries if they had not been preserved under the ash.
• The Colossus of Rhodes. Three of the ancient wonders of the world were destroyed by earthquakes, including the colossal bronze statue standing at the harbor on the island of Rhodes. It stood for only 54 years before a violent earthquake broke it at the knees. The statue toppled over and crashed backward to the ground.
• Florentine Artwork. In November 1966, flooding caused the banks of the Arno River to burst. More than 100 people died, and, by some estimates, millions of cultural objects were lost. These included more than 1,500 significant artworks by Uccello, Bonaiuto, Donatello, Ghiberti, and dozens more.

While no one knows how many pieces of art large and small would be in an imaginary Museum of Lost Art, consideration of that museum has helped us recognize and better appreciate the artwork that is in existence today. None of it is permanent; all of it is fragile, and even the most robust pieces have a temporal quality. That very nature helps you appreciate what needs to be appreciated today.