Vermeer’s The Concert (c. 1664) was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990—along with 12 other pieces of art, including three works by Rembrandt. The heist is known for the Vermeer painting that was taken.
If The Concert was found and could be restored to a presentable condition, it would be returned to the Gardner and placed in the frame it was cut from in the early morning hours after St. Patrick’s Day 1990. It would be an art world miracle. People from all over the globe would come to Boston to see this painting. If the Gardner Museum were to offer the painting for sale, the bids would be north of $500 million.
But that wouldn’t happen. Isabella Stewart Gardner, in her trust, made it clear that no part of her collection is to be moved or sold. If the painting she paid $5,000 for in Paris in 1892 was sold, Harvard University has standing permission to come into the Gardner, crate every single item up, and take it to Paris for sale.
But what you just read is irrelevant when discussing the most valuable painting in the world. The Concert, long missing, would not be the most valuable painting in the world if found. That honor goes to Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1513-1514). This painting was stolen by the Gestapo division of the Nutty Nazis in 1939. Along with other paintings of value, the Young Man had been moved for safekeeping from Poland’s Czartoryski Museum in Krakow to a private residence in Sienawa, a town 180 miles away. But that wasn’t far enough away. The entire collection was found and confiscated.
From the collection, three pieces (Raphael’s painting, DaVinci’s Lady with an Ermine and Rembrandt’s Landscape with a Good Samaritan) were given to Hans Frank, Hitler’s appointee as the non-elected governor of Poland.
The paintings were in Frank’s possession in January of 1945 in Krakow’s Wawel Castle (in essence, where Hans Frank was a squatter). When Frank was arrested in May of 1945, the DaVinci and the Rembrandt were recovered. Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man was not. So, this painting has been missing for far longer than The Concert, one of the reasons it’s value would be greater if recovered in a restorable condition.
If you combined the values of recovered and restored The Concert and Portrait of a Young Man, a price tag of $1 billion is not unreasonable.
The movie Monuments Men (2014) was better the second time I watched it. I had an issue with Bill Murray the first go round but he grew on me for the second watching. There was a scene where German troops set fire to paintings in a storage cave. One of the paintings depicted being set on fire was Raphael’s painting. However, at the end of the movie George Clooney’s character, Frank Stokes, is giving a demonstration to Harry Truman and other top politicians. One of the paintings shown is Portrait of a Young Man.
The Monuments Men and Woman Foundation, located in Dallas, has produced a deck of playing cards depicting paintings missing as a result of actions by the Germans and their co-conspirators. One can make a good poker hand with works by well- known artists:
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has kept the frames its artwork was stolen from on display. The National Museum of Krakow has the frame that Portrait of a Young Man was stolen from on display. While I can’t see the actual paintings, I am planning a trip to retrace my Vermeer journey in the Netherlands coupled with a trip to Krakow.