This panel hung for many years behind the rood screen of a small church in rural Belgium, but its current whereabouts are unknown.With its decadent architecture, many extraordinary remains of the Roman Empire, a dramatic and often turbulent history, and stunning natural scenery, it’s really no wonder that artists, poets, philosophers and writers have turned to Italy for centuries to inspire and create. The mastermind behind its theft from the cathedral of St Bavo in Ghent was a tubby stockbroker obsessed with the novels of Maurice Leblanc and his gentleman burglar, Arsène Lupin – he modelled the heist on the plot of a story called The Hollow Needle. The panel depicting the Righteous Judges was stolen in 1934 and never found. All of the altarpiece’s 12 panels are now intact, but one is not the original. The object of 13 crimes over six centuries, it has been burgled, all or in part, six times (dwarfing the runner-up, Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which was stolen a mere four times). Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece holds the dubious distinction of being the most-stolen artwork in history. Most taken … The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, from Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. It disappeared, along with a collection of 15 prized swords, in January 1946, when these blades were taken by someone who appeared to be an American allied officer. It was worn by the Tokugawa shoguns and declared a national treasure of Japan in 1939. The story goes that another samurai attacked Honjō with this sword and split his helmet in two with a single blow, but Honjō won the fight and took the sword as his prize. It was wielded in combat over the course of centuries, getting its name from a 17th-century owner, General Honjō Shigenaga. Japan’s most famous swordsmith, Goro Nyudoo Masamune, made this quasi-legendary katana – said to be perhaps the finest sword ever made – in the early 14th century. The story of Battle of Anghiari is told in Jonathan Jones’s fine book, The Lost Battles, and in my last book, Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art.

There is hope that Leonardo’s Battle could likewise see the light of day, but its excavation has been tangled for years in the famously convoluted Italian bureaucracy. The fresco was only rediscovered in 1860. Scholars believe Vasari built a false wall over Leonardo’s painting, to protect it while still fulfilling his commission – a trick he used to successfully preserve Masaccio’s Holy Trinity, one of the most important paintings in history, when he renovated the church of Santa Maria Novella around 1570. He planted a clue for us to follow: In that immense room, the Salone dei Cinquecento, there are only two words painted in: Cerca trova. But Vasari, the first art historian, was a great admirer of Leonardo and it is unlikely that he willingly painted over the Anghiari fresco. When they returned, Duke Cosimo commissioned his architect, Giorgio Vasari, to renovate the room, increasing its size and to paint it with a new fresco cycle showing Medici military victories. But The Battle of Anghiari was never finished, and it had been commissioned at a time when the ruling Medici family were ousted from Florence.Ĭlues … art experts probe a wall at the Palazzo Vecchio in 2012, in search of Leonardo’s fresco. It was made in 1505 on a wall in the grand meeting hall of Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, an intentional artist’s duel with Michelangelo, who was commissioned to illustrate a different battle scene on the opposite wall. In terms of lost art, nothing has received quite the press of Leonardo’s unfinished fresco secco. Leonardo da Vinci’s The Battle of Anghiari Today we focus on what you should keep an eye out for, should you wish to unleash your inner Indiana Jones … Painted over It’s festooned with works that are lost but for which there is reasonable hope they remain intact and will be found again. The following gallery of lost works is meant for optimistic treasure hunters. A case in point is Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, missing for centuries, covered in dirt, misattributed, thought all but worthless and now the world’s most expensive artwork. Important works resurface with just enough regularity to inspire hope that lost art may eventually be found. In art terms, lost could mean for ever, or simply that current whereabouts are unknown.

Art master pieces