Incredible Pieces of Art That Disappeared Before Making It Into a Museum

For every few Picasso paintings that hang in a museum, there’s one that will never see the light of day. You can thank the world’s stealthiest art thieves for that. The Art Loss Register, the world’s largest database of stolen art, estimates that there are 350,000 pillaged works of art that have yet to be recovered. “We've seen art being traded for drugs, weapons, involved in the international terrorism trade, [and] traded for antiquities,” Chris Marinello, general counsel for the Art Loss Register, told ABC News in 2012.

While some of the most infamous art heists have taken place at museums around the world—including the theft of the Mona Lisa by a Louvre employee in 1911 and the 1990 heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in which more than $300 million worth of work was stolen—other pieces never even make it to a public viewing. Check out these Incredible Pieces of Art That Disappeared Before Making it Into a Museum because you'll probably never see them hanging on a wall.

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Year disappeared: 2011

The newest addition to the FBI’s Top Ten Art Crimes list came about on September 8, 2011, when an armed robber stole this signed Renoir oil painting from a private home in Houston. There’s still a $50,000 reward up for grabs for information leading to the recovery of the painting, which is estimated to be worth $1 million.

Year disappeared: 2002

Ninety years after Whitney Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney commissioned artist Max Parrish to paint a series of oil panels for her Fifth Avenue mansion, two of them were stolen while on display at a gallery in West Hollywood, California. The theft was much more elaborate than a smash and grab; the burglar(s) disabled the gallery’s alarm system, cut a hole in the gallery’s ceiling, and cut the murals—which are valued at $4.2 million—from their oak frames.

Year disappeared: 1918

The Royal Danish Egg is one of eight Fabergé eggs that are currently missing and is one of only two that was ever photographed. The jewel-encrusted Easter egg was crafted in 1903 for Nicholas II of Russia, who presented it as a gift to his mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna. The famed Fabergé collection was pillaged during the Russian Revolution, with each egg later being sold, stolen, or shipped off to museums. Each one holds a value of over $1 million.

Year disappeared: 2012

In late April of 2012, a private collector in Detroit had 19 pieces of art stolen from a storage facility, including a silkscreen belonging to Andy Warhol that he used for his Flowers prints. The tool is valued between $2,000 and $3,000 (a fraction of the entire collection’s $1 million-plus estimated worth).

Year disappeared: 1995

With an estimated worth of $3.5 million, the Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius is a work of art in its own right and one of the world’s most expensive instruments. The 287-year-old violin was taken from the apartment of Erica Morini, a 91-year-old concert violinist, while she was hospitalized in 1995. The violin had been a gift from her father when she was just a child. She died shortly thereafter and was never told of its theft.

Year disappeared: 2007

On June 10, 2007, a visitor to Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales managed to smuggle out an oil on wood self-portrait by Dutch master Frans Van Mieris the Elder, valued at more than $1 million, while the gallery was open.

Year disappeared: 1990

Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s White Duck was one of the most famed paintings to hang in Houghton Hall, the former home of Great Britain’s first prime minister. In 1990 the piece, valued at more than $8 million, was ripped directly from its frame. It has never been seen since, and there are no suspects in its theft.

Year disappeared: 1934

In 1432, brothers Jan and Hubert Van Eyck created the Ghent Altarpiece focused on the “Adoration of the Lamb” story for Saint Bavon’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. In 1934, two panels from their creation were stolen, only one of which was ever recovered. Local politician Arsène Goedertier was suspected of the theft but passed away before revealing the remaining panel’s whereabouts.

Year disappeared: 1939

An 1888 letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother, Theo, is the only piece of evidence of The Lovers’ existence. In the correspondence, he included a sketch of the piece, completed in the same year, which is thought to have been stolen by the Nazis and was among the pieces the Monuments Men were looking to recover.

Year disappeared: 1969

There are many theories about what happened to Caravaggio’s Nativity after it was lifted from its frame in 1969 from its home in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Some say it was burned, others claim it was destroyed by the animals who inhabited the farmhouse in which it was hidden. But most fingers point to the local mafia as the culprits; in 2008, a former mafia leader confessed that it was burned after being damaged by rats in a barn.