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Lost artworks are original pieces of art that credible sources indicate once existed but that cannot be accounted for in museums or private collections or are known to have been destroyed deliberately or accidentally or neglected through ignorance and lack of connoisseurship.
Oct 31, 2023 · Julie Daunt 31 October 2023. When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Musée du Louvre in Paris in 1911, the theft caused an international sensation. Hiding in a broom closet until the museum was closed, Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia then swiped the painting, leaving just four iron pegs on the walls. Two years later, the thief and the ...
- Julie Daunt
Explore 12 artworks that have been stolen or gone missing over the years, from van Gogh's Parsonage to Cézanne's View of Auvers-sur-Oise. Help track down the missing masterpieces by sending your tips and theories to the curator.
Mar 15, 2017 · Paintings by the likes of Van Gogh, Klimt, and Raphael were just some of the artworks stolen or destroyed in World War Two. One such painting is The Tower of Blue Horses by Franz Marc. WILLIAM...
- Not Everything That Shines Is Silver
- Casting Pearls to The Swine
- The Thames Swells Its Banks
- The Schloss Immendorf Castle Fire
- MoMA Burns
- Swissair Flight 111
- A Matter of Politics
- The Artist’S Self-Critique
- The Sitter’S Prerogative
The Jewel of Vicenzawas produced by Italian architect Andrea Palladio in the 16th century. It consisted of a detailed miniature replica of the city of Vicenza, in the north of Italy, carved in great detail from wood, but covered in a thin sheet of silver. This wooden piece of lost art was first created as an offering to the Virgin of Mount Bericoin...
The theft of the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence by Caravaggio is among the most bizarre stories of lost art, with an extraordinary fate befalling the great early Baroque masterpiece. Painted in 1600, the piece portrays the nativity of Jesus and was kept in the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. Because the investigation of this theft...
War and Peace is an engraving on Indian laid paper by mid-19th-century British artist Sir Edwin Landseer, a favoured artist of Queen Victoria’s court. The art work, which was stored by the Tate Gallery in London, saw its ruinous end when the museum basement was devastated by a natural disaster: the flooding of the famous Thames river in 1928. This ...
Many stories of lost art can be traced to the destructive power of fire. Among the most noteworthy is the case of the exquisite wall paintings made by Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimtfor the Great Hall of the University of Vienna in the 20th century. The set of three paintings represented the main disciplines of the University: Medicine, Phi...
Another big art loss to the destruction of fire was the Water Lilies panel exhibited at MoMA in New York, painted by impressionist Claude Monetbetween 1914-1926. This fatal casualty took place in 1958 when MoMA caught fire due to the negligence of repairmen who were working on the air conditioning of the second floor of the building. While enjoying...
Lost art can also be caught up in the middle of enormous human tragedies. This is the case of a Picassopainting titled “Le peintre” (The painter) worth $1.5 million. This piece, aboard Swissair flight 111 traversing the New York – Geneva route, was part of the aircraft’s commercial cargo when the airplane crashed near Nova Scotia, Canada in 1998. A...
They say that good art should always reflect the times in which it was made, and Mexican painter Diego Rivera added many critiques to capitalism in his art. Moving to the US with his wife, surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, Rivera was commissioned to decoratethe walls of the newly minted Rockefeller Center’s Lobby in New York. His idea was to scrutini...
Lost art can also be destroyed by its creators, as disappointment and frustration are also often inevitably part of the creative process. In this example, figurative painter Francis Bacon created a series of 50 reinterpretations of Velázquez’s “Pope Innocent X” painting. It is well-known that Bacon had a tendency to destroy the art he wasn’t satisf...
Art can be destroyed by creators, as it can also be destroyed by those who commission and thus ultimately own it. This is the case with Winston Churchill’s portrait from 1954 commissioned from artist Graham Sutherland. Funded by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the art workwas meant to be the ex prime-minister’s 80th birthday gift. Chur...
The Gallery of Lost Art is an immersive, online exhibition that tells the fascinating stories of artworks that have disappeared. Each week a new story of loss is added and the evidence presented for examination
Dec 26, 2022 · A Lost Painting by Futurist Master Umberto Boccioni Turned Up at a Dorset Junk Sale for Around $100. It Could Be Worth $288,000. By Vittoria Benzine, September 6, 2022. A portrait of a young woman, attributed to Umberto Boccioni and dated 1911.
