Most expensive loss of world art

Most expensive loss of world art. It is not a secret that on the black market sale of art objects is on demand, it’s inferior to trade in drugs, weapons and sexual services. Not surprisingly, the art world looses annually tens of thousands of paintings, sculptures, prints, collages, the value of which increases every year. Here is a list of the ten most expensive works of art stolen, whose fate remains a mystery. Dutch postmodernist painting by Vincent Van Gogh ‘Poppies’ was stolen in 2010 from the Cairo Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, which was about to be closed for repairs. Hoping to seize the painting intelligence agencies blocked airports, train stations, ports, but all efforts were in vain. A few years later the British experts made ​​a sensational statement that the real “Poppies” were stolen from the museum in 1977 and thieves risked freedom for forgery

The Nazis committed many crimes against art: disagreeable Nazis recognized vanguard “degenerate” and appropriated classical paintings. This happened with the painting of Raphael. “Portrait of a Young Man” was confiscated in 1939. Shortly before World War II, the picture came into the hands of the Governor-General of occupied Poland, Hans Frank. During interrogation on the eve of the Nuremberg Trials, it listed the places of the stolen painting, but a masterpiece of Raphael was not there. In 2012 it was reported that the masterpiece is in a bank vault on the territory of either the United States, or in Europe.

In May 2010, in France there was a robbery of century – thief, who was likely to have acted alone, entered the Paris Museum of Modern Art, cracking a window grille. Slowly, he pulled out of frame five paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Leger. According to the records from the cameras, the offender was quiet – as if he was sure that he wouldn’t be caught. He was wrong: in a half year after the theft detectives calculated both the thief, and the customer. The latter admitted that he felt under surveillance, panicked and destroyed all the paintings, including the most valuable – “Dove with green peas.” The police did not believe him and continues to look for stolen painting.

The tradition to store great canvases in churches and cathedrals played a cruel joke with the Italians: in 1969 from the chapel of San Lorenzo in Palermo disappeared one of the works of Caravaggio. The main suspects in the theft were considered representatives of the Sicilian Mafia, but intelligence agencies for a long time could not find neither customers nor the performers nor the painting. The truth about the sad fate of “Christmas” opened in 2009, when killer Gaspare Spatutstsa said in court that the painting was kept in a barn on the family farm of Pullara. Mafiosi not considered necessary to take care of the canvas, and it was gnawed by rats and pigs. Realizing that the damaged canvas sell fails, it was burned.

Luxury Christmas gift made ​​for himself in 1999 the organizer of steal the painting “View of Auvers-sur-Oise” from the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford. While the whole country launched fireworks, drank champagne and counted the seconds before the millennium, a thief crept unnoticed into the hall, where the paintings of the Impressionists were represented, and took one of the most valuable of them. It is interesting, incidentally, that Cezanne himself was not entirely satisfied with his work, he did not leave a signature on the canvas, and therefore considered it unfinished.

The size of the sculpture was not a particular problem for the theft. The dimensions of ‘Reclining Figure’ reached three and a half meters in length and two – in height and width. “Reclining Figure” created by modernist Henry Moore, was on the territory belonged to his estates in the county of Hertfordshire. The sculpture in minutes was lifted onto a truck with a winch – right under the CCTV cameras. After several years of fruitless searching the police came to the conclusion that “Reclining Figure” was melted.

One of the most cynical abductions in the field of art was made ​​in 1995, when in a New York apartment of the famous Austrian violinist Erica Morini was missing instrument made by Antonio Stradivari. The woman, who by that time was already more than 90 years old, was in the hospital. After some discussion, friends and relatives of Morini decided not to tell her the sad news: fearing that the heart of the old woman simply would not sustain such a loss, because the violin was given by her father more than half a century ago. Morini died a few days later – in blissful ignorance.

Precious paintings are rarely a random prey: usually they are being hunted. But the painting ‘Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair’ became the exception – robber got it just by coincidence. September 8, 2011 a gunman burst into the rich house in the west of Houston, Texas, and threatening with a gun demanded money and jewelry put on the table. Frightened landlord found the strength only to point to a picture hanging on the wall and called its approximate cost. Delighted with unexpected luck, the offender grabbed the “Madeleine” and disappeared in the darkness.

Unlikely Dutch portraitist Frans van Mieris, the elder imagined that his tendency to paint small format in the future would play into the hands of robbers. Staff at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia, where in 2007 a ​​self-portrait disappeared, suggest that crime was inspired by small size – only 20 to 16 centimeters. Moreover, experts tend to believe the theft was spontaneous. Some of the visitors suddenly realized that to carry “Chevalier” in the bag is not difficult – and immediately realized their plan.

The idea of ​​preserving the national cultural heritage is extremely popular among the residents of Albion. However, stolen by enterprising thieves British statues punctually get into local scrap metal items. And it doesn’t matter if they are faceless street decorations, or the works of recognized masters.

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