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[shahrukh]

This painting of "Leda and the Swan" was created circa 1530 by Michelangelo. The story goes that Michelangelo gave the painting to his friend and student, Antonio Mini, who took it to France. Mini may have sold the painting, because it was last seen in the royal collection at Fontainebleau in the early 1530s. The court painter, Rosso Fiorentino, painted a copy of it, which is the only existing version that remains.
 
7. John Banvard's Mississippi River Panorama: Cut into Pieces

[shahrukh]

The work above is another of Banvard's paintings.
 
John Banvard was an American panorama and portrait painter. Banvard's magnum opus was a huge panorama of the Mississippi River Valley. In 1840, the artist spent months traveling up and down the river in a boat, sketching the scenery. He then transferred the sketches to an enormous canvas.
 
The finished work measured twelve feet high by a mile and a half long. The massive panorama was advertised as the "three-mile canvas," (a slight exaggeration), and was brought on a tour of the entire United States. Towards the end of the 19th century, the panorama was cut into several pieces for storage, and the pieces have never been recovered.
 
8. Vincent Van Gogh's "The Painter on His Way to Work": Destroyed by Fire

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Vincent Van Gogh created nearly two thousand works of art in his lifetime; this is one of just six of his paintings that we know are lost forever. "The Painter on his Way to Work" was housed in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin before being destroyed by fire during World War II.
 
This is one of Van Gogh's many self-portraits, depicting the artist laden with painting supplies on the road to Montmajour in 1888.
 
9. Antoine Watteau's "Spring": Lost, Found, then Destroyed

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Antoine Watteau was a French painter who lived in the early 1700s. Circa 1716, Watteau painted a series of seasonal images for Pierre Crozat, among them Spring (Printemps), Autumn, Winter, and Summer. Of these four paintings, only one remains today. "Spring" was rediscovered in 1964, only to be destroyed by fire two years later, and "Autumn" and "Winter" have never been found.
 
Incidentally, another of Watteau's works, "La Surprise," (circa 1718) was found during an insurance evaluation in 2007. The oil painting was sold at auction on July 8, 2008 for 15 million Euros, setting a world record price for a painting by Watteau.
 
10. Johannes Vermeer's "The Concert": Stolen by Thieves



In one of the most famous art heists in history, Johannes Vermeer's "The Concert," valued at around two hundred million dollars, is considered to be the most valuable stolen work of art in the world. In 1990, two thieves disguised as police officers stole thirteen pieces of art from the Isabelle Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston. None of the Gardner Museum's missing works have surfaced since they were stolen.
 
Also among the famous paintings stolen in Boston was Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee."