Lost artworks are original pieces of art that credible sources or material evidence indicate once existed but that cannot be accounted for in museums or private collections, as well as works known to have been destroyed deliberately or accidentally or neglected through ignorance and lack of connoisseurship.
The Art Loss Register is a commercial computerized international database which captures information about lost and stolen art, antiques and collectables. It is operated by a commercial company based in London.
In the U.S., the FBI maintains the National Stolen Art File, "a database of stolen art and cultural property. Stolen objects are submitted for entry to the NSAF by law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad."[3]
A number of search and recovery efforts were created in response to major loss events, notably:
This section lists articles or article sections on lost works.
Depictions of missing works
Just Judges from the Ghent Altarpiece
The Gallery of Cornelis van der Geest (1628), by Willem van Haecht, which includes the lost Van Eyck Woman Bathing as well as the lost Portrait of Albrecht Dürer in Black Hat and Cloak
Cornelis Bos' engraving of Leda and the Swan by Michelangelo
Rubens' copy of Titian's Isabella d'Este in Red
Rubens' sketch of Michelangelo's Hercules marble statue
Renoir's Landscape with Two People as it appears in Bazille's Studio
List of notable missing artworks
Artist and work
Creation date(s) (est.)
Year lost (est.)
Loss event
Commission, provenance, documentation and surviving copies notes
In the Painted Chamber from 1490 to 1799. John Carter produced watercolor sketches of the tapestries in the 1790s. In possession of Mr Teschemacher in 1829.
Reni, GuidoAriadne from Bacchus and Ariadne ceiling painting
1638-40
1650
2002
Disassembled for easier sale by the estate of Michel Particelli d'Emery.[21] A fragment at Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna recognized as the lost Ariadne by Andrea Emiliani and Sir Denis Mahon
For the San Biagio Church in Forlì. Graphical notes by Girolamo Reggiani (1831) Black and White photo (1944) and color reconstruction drawing (2020) by Olivier Maceratesi
Painted for Veronica Gambara's Palazzo della Delizie, in the town of Correggio. Described in a letter dated Sept. 3, 1528 from Veronica Gambara to Isabella d’Este[39]
Raphael's first recorded commission, it was made for Andrea Baronci's chapel in the church of Sant'Agostino in Citta di Castello, near Urbino At least four fragments survive (Louvre, Capodimonte)
The central panel added to the collection of Elector Maximilian of Bavaria. A 1615 copy of the entire altarpiece by Jobst Harrich of Nuremberg survives
Huber, WolfPortrait of an Architect (Self-Portrait?)
1529
1947
Fire at the Musée de Beaux Arts, Strasbourg, August 13, 1947 (one of 30 paintings destroyed)
Cranach the ElderCardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz
In the Church of the Scalzi, Venice. There is a copy of the entire ceiling from before 1914, painted in gouache after the original by Mariano Fortuny, a 1914 photograph by James Anderson and a reconstruction drawing (2019) by Olivier Maceratesi
Was in the basement of the Tate Gallery. Engravings of both survive. A copy of War appeared on the television program Fake or Fortune, where it was thought to possibly be the original.[70]
Bragaldi, Mario Jupiter on Mount Olympus ceiling fresco
↑ Damaged by damp and finally destroyed by fire in the early 19th century[38]
1 2 3 4 Companion piece, The Raising of Lazarus (transferred to canvas) is in the V&A
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↑ Simpson, Elizabeth (1997). The Spoils of War--World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and The Bard Graduate Center. ISBN0-8109-4469-3.
↑ Norris, Christopher (December 1952). "The Disaster at Flakturm Friedrichshain: a Chronicle and List of Paintings". The Burlington Magazine. XCIV (597).
↑ Louis Viardot, An Illustrated History of Painters of All Schools (1877), p. 42. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
↑ Sir George Francis Hill, Pisanello, 1905 pp.77-81. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
↑ Louis Viardot,An Illustrated History of Painters of All Schools (1877), p.52. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
↑ David G. Wilkins, "Donatello's Lost Dovizia for the Mercato Vecchio: Wealth and Charity as Florentine Civic Virtues," The Art Bulletin, vol.65, Issue 3 (1983),pp.401-23. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
↑ Laura A.Hibbard, "Erkenbald the Belgian: A Study in Medieval Exempla of Justice," Modern Philology, Vol.17, April 1920, pp. 672-74. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
↑ Giacchino Barbera, et al.,Antonello Da Messina Sicily's Renaissance Master (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), p. 22. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
↑ Howard Jones & Ross Kilpatrick, "Cicero, Plutarch and Vincenzo Foppa. Rethinking the Medici Bank Fresco (London, The Wallace Collection, Inv. P538)," International Journal of the Classical Tradition Vol.13, No.3, Winter 2007, pp. 369-83. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
↑ F. Russell, "Towards a Reassessment of Perugino's Lost Fresco of the 'Adoration of the Magi' at San Giusto alle Mura" Burlington Magazine, Vol. cxvi (Nov. 1974), pp.646-52. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
↑ K. Phillips-Court,The Perfect Genre: Drama and Painting in Renaissance Italy (Ashgate Publishing Co., 2011) p. 158 and n. 51. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
↑ William E. Wallace, "The Bentivoglio Palace Lost and Reconstructed," The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol.10, No.3 (Autumn 1979), pp.97-114. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
↑ Julia Mary Cartwright Ady,The Life and Art of Sandro Botticelli (London, Duckworth, 1904), pp. 117-20. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
↑ David Ekserdijan, Correggio (Yale University Press 1997), pp. 172, 175 and fig.195. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
↑ John Guy, A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and his Dearest Meg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009), p.172. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
↑ Gentleman's Magazine, November 1834 pp. 477-83. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ John Pine,The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords... (1739). Retrieved 18 January 2016.
↑ James Hutton,A Hundred Years Ago, An Historical Sketch, 1755-56 (1857) p. 142. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
↑ John Smith, A catalogue raisonne of the works of the most eminent... (1830), p. 153. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
↑ The Annual Register, Or, A View of the History and Politics of the Year, 1861, pp. 18-19. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ Albert J. Loomie, "A Lost Crucifixion by Rubens," The Burlington Magazine Vol. 138, No. 1124 (Nov. 1996). Retrieved 8 June 2014.
↑ "Rubens Work Is Burned," The New York Times (AP), June 14, 1985. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
↑ W. Pickering,The Gentleman's Magazine vol. 5 (1836), p.590. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ Barnes, An Examination of Hunting Scenes by Peter Paul Rubens (2009), p.34. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ Peter C. Sutton, et al., Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens (Yale University Press,2004), p.144 and Fig.1. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
↑ Helmut Wohl, ed.,"Notes to Life of Peter Paul Rubens" p. 207 n. 25 in Giovan Pietro Bellori: The Lives of the Modern Painters ... Cambridge Univ. Press 2005. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
↑ Anne T. Woollett and Ariane Suchtelen,Rubens & Brueghel: A Working Friendship, (2006), p.94 and n.12. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
↑ Arthur K. Wheelock and Adele F. Seeff,The Public and Private in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age, University of Delaware Press (2000), p.224. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
↑ Edmund Burke, ed.,The Annual Register, (Rivington 1872), pp. 25-27. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
↑ C. P. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch ..., 1908, Vol. 1, p.14
↑ Susan Jaques,The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia, pp.89-90. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
↑ R. Ward Bissell,Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonne (Penn State Press 2000), pp.296-97. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
LaFarge, Henry Adams, ed. (1946). Lost Treasures of Europe: 427 Photographs. Pantheon.
Simpson, Elizabeth (1997). The Spoils of War--World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., and The Bard Graduate Center. ISBN0-8109-4469-3.
Norris, Christopher (December 1952). "The Disaster at Flakturm Friedrichshain: a Chronicle and List of Paintings". The Burlington Magazine. XCIV (597).
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Alexander III Commemorative egg by Fabergé Est. $20–30,000,000
Royal Danish egg (Danish Jubilee egg) by Fabergé Est. $20–30,000,000
Vase with Lychnis by Van Gogh
White Duck by Jean-Baptiste Oudry Est. (2006) US$8,800,000 [1]
