
Wikimedia Commons • Public Domain
by Johannes Vermeer, 1664
Johannes Vermeer painted The Concert around 1664, depicting three figures engaged in music-making within a wealthy Dutch home. A woman sits at a harpsichord, her back partially turned, while a man plays the lute facing away from the viewer entirely. A second woman stands singing, completing this intimate domestic scene. On the wall behind them hangs a copy of Dirck van Baburen's The Procuress, a painting Vermeer's mother-in-law actually owned.
The Concert became the centerpiece of the largest art theft in history. On March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers talked their way into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stole thirteen works, including this Vermeer. The painting alone accounts for roughly half the theft's estimated $500 million value. No arrests have been made. No works recovered. The museum still displays the empty frame where The Concert once hung, alongside a $10 million reward for information.
Isabella Stewart Gardner purchased the painting in 1892 for $5,000 at the estate sale of Théophile Thoré, the critic who'd revived Vermeer's reputation decades earlier. It was her first major acquisition. One of only 34 confirmed Vermeers in existence, The Concert may be the most valuable stolen object in the world. The case remains open.
Other masterpieces from the Baroque movement

Diego Velázquez, 1650
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1654
Louvre, Paris, Paris

Diego Velázquez, 1650
National Gallery, London

Diego Velázquez, 1656
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

El Greco, 1614
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Diego Velázquez, 1635
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

Frans Hals, 1624
Wallace Collection, London

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1633
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
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