12 Biggest Art Heists In The World

Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

Stolen from: The Louvre Museum, Paris in 1911
Art piece value: $100 million
Total value of robbery: $100 million
Theft backstory: The Mona Lisa was stolen by a museum worker named Vincenzo Peruggiam who slipped the artwork under his coat and walked out the front door. Peruggiam wanted to reclaim the painting for his home country of Italy and had the painting hung in his home for two years.

The Just Judges by Jan Van Eyck

Stolen from: Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium on April 10, 1934
Art piece value: 1 million Belgian francs
Total value of robbery: 1 million Belgian francs

View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Paul Cezzane

Stolen from: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England on December 31, 1999
Art piece value: $4.5 million
Total value of robbery: $4.5 million

Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence by Caravaggio

Stolen from: Oratory of San Lorenzo, Sicily on October, 1969
Art piece value: $20 million
Total value of robbery: $20 million

Seven masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, and Lucian Freud

Stolen from: Kunsthal Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands on October, 2012
Art pieces value: $24 million
Total value of robbery: $24 million

View of the Sea at Scheveningen* and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen by Rembrandt Van Rijn

Stolen from: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands on December 7, 2002
Value of art pieces: $30 million
Total value of robbery: $30 million
*Pictured

Poppy Flowers by Vincent van Gogh

Stolen from: Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo, Egypt in 2010
Art piece value: $55 million
Total value of robbery: $55 million

Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael

Stolen from: Czartoryski Museum, Poland in 1939
Art piece value: $100 million
Total value of robbery: $100 million+

The Scream by Edvard Munch

This piece of art has been stolen twice and there are actually four versions of Munch’s The Scream – two in paint and two in pastels.
Art piece value: One of the pastel versions sold for just shy of $120 million.
First robbery: Taken from the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway on the opening day of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics, February 12, 1994. The robbers left a note that read, “Thanks for the poor security.”
Second robbery: On August 22, 2004, masked gunmen entered the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway stealing a painted version of The Scream and another Edvard Munch painting, Madonna.

Le Pigeon Aux Petits Pois or The Pigeon With Green Peas by Pablo Picasso

Stolen from: Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris, France on May 20, 2010
Art piece value: $30 million
Total value of robbery: $140 million

Storm of the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt Van Rijn

Stolen from: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston on March 18, 1990
Art piece value: $3.4 million
Total value of robbery: $500 million

The Concert by Johannes Vermeer

Stolen from: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston on March 18, 1990
Art piece value: $250 million
Total value of robbery: $500 million

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