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A work of art is considered to be lost when credible sources, such as historians and ancient scholars, prove that it once existed, but the piece has either been destroyed or simply cannot be located in private collections or museums. Artwork can be lost for a number of reasons, from floods and fires to war or plain old fickleness. Read on to discover ten amazing masterpieces that have been lost to humankind forever.
 
1. The Colossus of Rhodes: Lost in an Earthquake

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The Colossus of Rhodes was an enormous statue of the Greek Titan Helios, the personification of the sun, which was built in the Greek city of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos between 292 and 280 BC. This massive statue stood nearly one hundred feet high and rested on a fifty-foot high marble pedestal. This masterpiece is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
 
The striking bronze Colossus took over twelve years to build, and it stood facing the city of Rhodes for over fifty-six years before an earthquake hit the city, collapsing the statue into hundreds of pieces, where they have lain for centuries.
 
2. Picasso's "The Painter": Lost in a Plane Crash

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This signed 1963 Collotype called "Le Peintre" (The Painter), by famed artist Pablo Picasso, was lost in the crash of Swissair Flight 111 off Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on September 2, 1998. In addition to this painting, which was valued at about one-and-a-half million dollars, the plane's shipment also contained almost a half a billion dollars worth of precious diamonds and other jewels.
 
En route from JFK airport in New York City to Geneva, Switzerland, the pilots sent a distress signal and were attempting to make an emergency landing in Nova Scotia when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all two hundred and twenty-nine souls on board. Though ninety-eight percent of the plane was recovered from the water, only about twenty centimeters of the Picasso work were located, and the jewels were nowhere to be found.
 
3. Fourteen Paintings by Gustav Klimt: Destroyed by Nazis

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Pictured above: "Schubert at the Piano" (1899).
 
Gustav Klimt was a prominent Austrian symbolist painter whose work often focused on the female form. Serena Lederer was a wealthy Viennese art patron who collected fourteen of Klimt's paintings. Lederer sent her collection to the Schloss Immendorf museum for safe keeping in 1943. Nevertheless, the collection was lost when the retreating Nazi party set Schloss Immendorf on fire in 1945.
 
Works ranging from 1898's "Musik II" to 1917's "Gastein," as well as the famed Vienna Ceiling Paintings, were destroyed in the fire.
 
4. Claude Monet's "Water Lilies": Destroyed by Fire

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Claude Monet, a founder of the French impressionist movement, created several beautiful water lily paintings beginning in 1883. New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was thrilled to acquire two of these paintings in 1957, only to have them both destroyed a mere one year later.
 
On April 15, 1958, a fire on the second floor of MoMA destroyed an eighteen-foot-long "Water Lilies" painting, along with a smaller (but still large) version of water lilies. Apparently, the fire was started when workmen who were installing an air conditioning unit took a smoking break near paint cans, sawdust, and a canvas drop cloth, igniting the canvas. The fire spread rapidly.
 
One worker was killed in the fire and several firefighters suffered from smoke inhalation. Museum staff tried valiantly to save as many paintings as possible, but between the fire, the water damage, and the destruction caused by firefighters who worked to control the blaze, the large "Water Lilies" painting was a total loss. For three years, the museum tried to restore the smaller of the two paintings, but in 1961 it declared that the work was also damaged beyond repair.
 
5. Sutherland's Portrait of Winston Churchill: Destroyed by Churchill's Wife

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In 1954, Graham Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, that was presented to Churchill at a public ceremony on his eightieth birthday. Sutherland was a modernist painter with a reputation for capturing the "real" side of his subjects. Instead of depicting Churchill as stately, Sutherland painted him as he truly looked, and apparently neither Churchill nor his wife liked the painting.
 
After the public presentation in 1954, the painting was taken to his country home at Chartwell but was never displayed. It wasn't until Lady Churchill died in 1977 that the truth was discovered; she had destroyed the painting shortly after it was delivered.
 
6. Michelangelo's "Leda and the Swan": Simply Disappeared



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