Buzz
Many iconic artworks remain unaccounted for, often due to a handful of ultra-wealthy collectors dominating the art market. These collectors frequently trade paintings in private transactions. Additionally, some missing pieces are likely hidden away by thieves, as selling stolen art is incredibly challenging. However, occasionally, these mysteries are unraveled, sometimes through surprising discoveries in the most unlikely locations.
10. The Enigma of the Talking Mouse
Stuart Little, the talking mouse from E.B. White’s beloved children’s book and subsequent film adaptation, played an unexpected role in uncovering the whereabouts of a Hungarian masterpiece missing for over eight decades. The avant-garde piece, titled Sleeping Lady with Black Vase by Robert Bereny, had vanished without a trace.
The last known record of the painting was a black-and-white photograph from a 1928 exhibition. It mysteriously disappeared in the 1920s, leaving its fate unknown. In a surprising twist, Gergely Barki, a researcher at the Hungarian National Gallery, was watching the 1999 film Stuart Little with his daughter Lola during the 2009 holiday season. To his astonishment, the missing artwork appeared as a prop in the Littles’ fictional home, prominently displayed above the fireplace.
“I was stunned when I spotted Bereny’s long-lost painting behind Hugh Laurie. I almost dropped Lola from my lap,” Barki recalled. “It just goes to show that a researcher’s work never stops, even during a Christmas movie night.”
How did such a priceless painting become a set piece in a Hollywood film? Determined to find out, Barki reached out to Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures via email. After two years, a former assistant set designer from Sony Pictures provided the explanation.
She had bought the artwork for just $500 at an antique shop in Pasadena, California, to use as part of the Littles’ living room decor. Once filming wrapped up, she took the painting home and displayed it on her apartment wall.
Following the sale of Bereny’s masterpiece to a private collector by the woman, the artwork was repatriated to Hungary. It was later auctioned in Budapest in 2014, fetching €229,500 ($285,700).
Barki speculates that the buyer from the 1928 exhibition might have been Jewish and fled Hungary with the painting during the tumultuous period of World War II.
9. The Enigma of the Altarpiece
The solution to one of the art world’s most baffling mysteries lay with Jean Preston, a retired woman in Oxford, England, who lived a simple life. She dined on frozen meals, ordered clothes from catalogs, and traveled exclusively by foot or bus. Despite owning a treasure trove of missing masterpieces, she embraced a life of remarkable humility, reminiscent of the values upheld by Fra Angelico, the Renaissance painter and Dominican friar known as the “Angelic One.” She understood that the true value of his works lay in their spiritual essence rather than their monetary worth.
Fra Angelico, known for his humility, was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His renowned San Marco altarpiece in Florence, commissioned by Cosimo de Medici in 1438, features a main panel of the Madonna and child that remains at San Marco. However, the eight smaller panels portraying saints were lost during the Napoleonic wars. While six were later found in global galleries and private collections, the final two were missing for two centuries until they were uncovered behind the door of Miss Preston’s spare bedroom.
Miss Preston first noticed the masterpieces in a “box of odds and ends” while working at a California museum. Uninterested others overlooked them, but she admired them and informed her art collector father, who bought the pair for $200. Upon his passing, she inherited the paintings.
For most of her life, Miss Preston was unaware of the paintings’ financial worth. In 2005, she consulted art historian Michael Liversidge, who identified them as the missing San Marco altarpiece panels. Upon learning their significance, she calmly returned them behind her spare bedroom door.
“She was pleased but not shocked,” Liversidge recalled. “As a medievalist, she valued their academic significance far more than their monetary worth.” Her nephew, Martin Preston, agreed, stating, “She was indifferent to money and focused solely on the artistic merit of the pieces.”
After her passing, the two panels were auctioned in 2007, selling for around $3.9 million.
8. The Mystery of the Botched Restoration
In 1960, while neighbors in Vermont, Donald Trachte, the illustrator behind the Henry comic strip, purchased a painting titled Breaking Home Ties from Norman Rockwell for $900. The artwork had graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954.
Following Trachte’s death in 2005 at the age of 89, his family and art experts were puzzled by the discrepancies between the painting in his home and the version featured on the Post cover. Notably, the boy’s facial features and color tones seemed inconsistent with the original.
Initially, experts speculated that the painting had undergone a poor restoration. However, they later discovered that no restoration had ever taken place.
Suspecting a forgery, Trachte’s adult sons searched their father’s studio for answers. One of them noticed an irregularity in the wood paneling. Upon removing the false wall, they uncovered a secret room containing the authentic Rockwell painting. It is now thought that Trachte created the forgery around 1973 amid a contentious divorce. Despite hiding the original, he retained ownership of the Rockwell as part of the divorce settlement.
The original artwork was auctioned in 2006 for $15.4 million, setting a record for a Norman Rockwell painting at the time.
7. The Enigma of Lombardy
This long-lost masterpiece had been absent for so many years that its existence was questioned. In 2013, however, Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Isabella d’Este, Marquesa of Mantua, was found in a private collection stored in a Swiss bank vault, seemingly solving a 500-year-old mystery. The painting is believed to have been acquired by the owner’s family in the early 1900s.
In 1499, Da Vinci created a pencil sketch of d’Este in Mantua, a city in Italy’s Lombardy region. This sketch is now displayed at the Louvre Museum in France. The marquesa later requested a painted version of the sketch, but until recently, historians believed da Vinci either never completed it or abandoned the project.
Some scholars, such as Martin Kemp of Trinity College, Oxford, question the painting’s legitimacy. “Canvas wasn’t a medium used by Leonardo or his workshop,” Kemp noted. “However, with Leonardo, I’ve learned to expect the unexpected.”
On the other hand, experts like Carlo Pedretti, a renowned da Vinci scholar from the University of California, Los Angeles, challenge Kemp’s view. “There’s no question that the portrait is Leonardo’s work,” Pedretti asserted. He believes da Vinci painted the face, while his assistants added details like the palm leaf d’Este holds.
Carbon dating indicates a 95% likelihood the artwork was produced between 1460 and 1650. The pigments and primer match those da Vinci used. Additionally, historical records suggest da Vinci met d’Este at the Vatican in 1514, leading some experts to speculate he may have finished the painting there.
A key piece of evidence supports the idea that da Vinci completed the masterpiece. During a 1517 visit to France, he showcased his works to Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. The cardinal’s assistant recorded: “Among the pieces was an oil painting portraying a lady from Lombardy.”
Given that fewer than 20 authenticated da Vinci works exist, this painting could be valued at tens of millions of dollars.
6. The Mystery of the Autoworker’s Kitchen
In 1975, an Italian autoworker unknowingly purchased two stolen masterpieces for $25 at an auction held by the Italian national railway’s lost and found department. The artworks were Pierre Bonnard’s The Girl With Two Chairs and Paul Gauguin’s Still Life of Fruit on a Table with a Small Dog, stolen from a British couple in 1970. Combined, their value was estimated at $50 million.
Unaware of their worth, the autoworker displayed the paintings in his kitchen for nearly four decades. When his son attempted to sell them in 2013, art experts identified them as stolen. Although the police were notified, neither the man nor his son faced suspicion. Since the original British owners had passed away without heirs, the legal system must now decide the rightful ownership of the paintings.
5. The Mystery of the Garbage Bag
While walking to grab coffee one March morning in 2003, Elizabeth Gibson noticed a vibrant abstract painting tucked between two large trash bags outside a Manhattan apartment building. Though struck by its power, she never imagined it was a masterpiece, especially given its inexpensive frame. The painting she salvaged that day turned out to be Three People, a 1970 creation by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, which had been stolen from a Houston couple in the 1980s.
Ms. Gibson displayed the painting in her apartment. Later, she inspected it and noticed gallery labels on the back. Despite her efforts to research its origins, it wasn’t until three years after discovering Three People that a gallery employee revealed it was a “notoriously stolen” artwork.
Ms. Gibson conducted a Google search, stumbled upon an Antiques Roadshow TV episode, and traveled to Baltimore to watch a rerun of the “Missing Masterpieces” segment highlighting Tamayo’s artwork. Back in New York, she met with the Sotheby’s expert featured on the show to discuss Three People. Initially, she introduced herself only as “Mystery Woman.”
Eventually, she allowed the expert to view the painting in her apartment. He verified it was the lost masterpiece and awarded her a $15,000 reward from the original owners, along with a finder’s fee from Sotheby’s. The artwork, also known as Tres Personajes, was auctioned by Sotheby’s for over $1 million in November 2007.
4. The Mystery of the Drunken Middleman
Initially, no one in this bizarre story seemed aware that Thomas Doyle was a convicted felon with 11 theft charges over 34 years. This time, he persuaded investor Gary Fitzgerald to pay $880,000 for an alleged 80% stake in the oil painting Portrait of a Girl by 19th-century French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Doyle had actually purchased the masterpiece for $775,000, not the $1.1 million he claimed to Fitzgerald.
Doyle further claimed to Fitzgerald that another buyer was prepared to purchase the painting for $1.7 million. This, too, was false. In reality, Doyle allegedly knew the painting had been valued at no more than $700,000.
Here’s where the story takes a bizarre turn. Doyle’s alleged girlfriend, Kristyn Trudgeon, was said to be the true majority owner of the painting, with Doyle as her co-owner. She supposedly had no knowledge of his criminal history. On July 28, 2010, the pair sent one of Doyle’s associates as a middleman to meet a potential buyer at a Manhattan hotel.
The buyer declined the offer. The middleman became intoxicated and was later seen leaving the hotel around 12:50 AM with the painting. However, he arrived at his apartment at 2:30 AM without the Corot masterpiece.
The middleman insisted he had lost the painting, prompting Trudgeon (Doyle’s girlfriend and co-owner) to sue him. Meanwhile, Doyle was arrested on charges of wire and mail fraud for defrauding Fitzgerald, who had paid $880,000 for an 80% stake in the painting. Upon seeing Doyle’s mug shot, Trudgeon realized she was involved with a felon and withdrew her lawsuit against the middleman.
The whereabouts of the missing masterpiece remained unknown until a doorman at a nearby Manhattan building returned from vacation. He had discovered the painting in the bushes and, assuming it belonged to a resident, stored it in his locker. Upon his return, he learned the painting was missing and handed it over to the police.
Doyle was sentenced to six years in prison, and the Corot masterpiece was auctioned to compensate the defrauded investor, Fitzgerald.
3. The Mystery of the Nonexistent Man
Cornelius Gurlitt, 81, was described by a German official as “a man who didn’t exist.” He had no records with German government agencies, no pension, and no health insurance. However, he was carrying a large sum of cash when customs officials stopped him on a train to Munich.
During a tax investigation in 2011, authorities searched his dilapidated apartment in Munich’s suburbs. Amid the clutter, they uncovered a trove of over 1,400 artworks valued at more than $1.3 billion. The collection included masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and others, featuring drawings, engravings, paintings, prints, and woodcuts.
A significant portion of the art was suspected to have been confiscated by the Nazis. “This is likely the largest single discovery of Holocaust-era artwork in years,” remarked Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register. “These are the types of pieces the Nazis would have plundered, either to sell for foreign currency or to display in their own museums.”
Gurlitt, an unemployed recluse, occasionally sold pieces from the collection to cover his living expenses. His father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, was an art collector during the Nazi regime. Despite having a Jewish grandmother, Hildebrand was useful to the Nazis because he had connections to sell art internationally. However, he secretly sold some works and hid the rest, falsely claiming they were destroyed in a wartime bombing.
An additional cache of over 200 items was found at Cornelius Gurlitt’s home in Salzburg. His lawyer stated that Gurlitt had instructed his legal team to return any looted artworks to their rightful Jewish owners.
2. The Mystery of the Oven
While some aspects of these missing masterpieces' mysteries have been resolved, others may remain unsolved forever.
In October 2012, seven paintings valued at tens of millions of dollars were stolen from Rotterdam’s Kunsthal museum. The stolen works included pieces by Meyer de Haan, Lucian Freud, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso.
Security footage revealed a bold heist by two men who disabled the alarm system and made off with the art in under two minutes. Some art experts believe the theft was a commissioned job by organized crime groups.
The stolen art was reportedly transported to Rotterdam and then to Carcaliu, a impoverished Romanian village where one of the thieves resided. The mother of one thief initially claimed to have burned the paintings in her oven to eliminate evidence against her son, though she later retracted this statement in court.
“We discovered numerous pigments used in professional oil paints, many of which were attached to canvas primer with canvas imprints,” explained Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, director of the museum analyzing the ashes. “This suggests someone burned oil paintings in the stove.” However, the analysis could only confirm that paintings were burned, not identify which ones.
The three young Romanian thieves were convicted in court, confirming their involvement in the theft of the missing masterpieces. However, the fate of the artworks remains uncertain—whether they were truly destroyed or simply hidden. The mother who allegedly burned the paintings received two years in prison for aiding a criminal and violating firearms laws. A separate trial was planned to investigate her claim of burning the masterpieces.
1. The Mystery of the Flea Market
As the saying goes, if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. This was the case when a Virginia woman claimed to have bought the small Renoir painting, On the Shore of the Seine, for just $7 at a flea market in 2009. Initially calling herself “Renoir Girl,” she attempted to sell the painting through an auction house. However, it was later revealed that the artwork had been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951, and the woman was identified as Marcia “Martha” Fuqua.
Marcia’s brother, Matt Fuqua, contested her story. Their mother, Marcia, had attended art school in Baltimore when the painting disappeared in 1951. Matt believed the painting had been a gift to their mother from an admirer, though she never disclosed the details. He stated that the artwork had hung in their mother’s home for years, a claim supported by family friends and acquaintances.
In early 2014, the judge ruled in favor of returning the painting to the museum. While the judge did not address the credibility of Renoir Girl’s account, Matt Fuqua expressed satisfaction with the decision. He revealed that before her passing, their mother had instructed Martha to return the Renoir to the museum. “This was my mother’s wish,” Matt stated.
