There ’s no warranty that art will brook the test of time — even if it ’s a masterpiece . Over the C , even paintings by greats like Leonardo da Vinci have been lost to history , their universe tell only by references to them in compose records . The Museum of Lost Artexplores some of the invaluable art that has disappeared since ancient time . “ Many of humanity ’s keen art have been lost to thieving , vandalism , iconoclasm , misfortune , and wilful or inadvertent destruction , ” author Noah Charney , an prowess historian who specify in artistic creation crime , writes . “ Our understanding of nontextual matter is skewed , inevitably , towards works that can be seen , that have outlived the numberless peril that can happen a work of fine art that is often as brickly as a piece of report . ”
Below are just a few model ofartthat has been lost , and some that has been found again .
1. Ancient Roman Frescos
The loss of art can dramatically dissemble how assimilator view history . Many ancient Roman paries house painting were demolish by lifelike catastrophe like theeruption of Mount Vesuviusin 79 CE , and thanks to this deficiency of grounds , many 19th century historiographer believed ancient Rome to be a black and white place , full of white marble . Once the city that Vesuvius buried in ash tree were eventually bring out again in the 18th and 19th centuries , unveil colorful mural and frescos like the unity on the wall of the grand Villa Poppea , historian set out to understand how colored Roman Catholic cities really were .
2. Gianlorenzo Bernini’sPortrait Bust of King Charles I
In 1654 , a gunpowder clip salt away in a former convent explode in the Dutch Ithiel Town of Delft , destroying much of the town and kill 100 people . One of those mass was Carel Fabritius , a mountain lion who was Rembrandt ’s star pupil . The fire destroyed almost all of his paintings . Egbert Lievensz van der Poel laterpainted the effect , title itExplosion of the Powder Magazine at Delft , 1654 .
Fire has been a devastating force in art chronicle . In 1734 , a firing in the Alcázar , Seville ’s royal castle , destroyed 500 pieces of art , including several early Diego Velázquez paintings as well as works by Leonardo , Anthony van Dyck , El Greco , and Raphael , among many others . In 1698 , a fire at Whitehall in London destroy art like Michelangelo ’s 15th centurySleeping Erosand Gianlorenzo Bernini ’s seventeenth centuryPortrait Bust of King Charles I. And that is n’t even number art destroy in the line of war , like the 154 works that burned when the Gemäldegalerie museum was strike during the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 .
3. Colossus of Rhodes Statue
Thisengravingshows the Colossus of Rhodes , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World , in what was probable its original localisation near the entrance to the Mandraki haven on the Hellenic island of Rhodes . The massive bronze statue by Chares of Lindos was completed in 280 BCE . Depicting the god Helios , it was around a third of the top of the Statue of Liberty and stood atop a 49 - fundament - high marble footstall . Just 54 years after it was erected , the Colossus was destroy in an quake that caused it to break apart at the knees and doss down back . While the impoverished statue lay where it had diminish for centuries , becoming a tourer destination in its own right , the bronze was melted down by an invading army in 653 CE , leave us with only drawing off of what it might have looked like , include the one above .
4. Rogier van der Weyden’sJustice Cycle
In some representative , the lost paintings create by maestro artists C of years ago may have been even more far-famed during their time than the works that survived . “ It is loose to blank out that turn we colligate with great creative person were not needfully their greatest , most influential creations ; often they are just the ones that go on to have survive , winning the historical roll of the dice , ” Charney spell .
Such is the display case with Rogier van der Weyden , one of the most influential catamount in 15th century Flanders . His most renowned paintings , four orotund work on the musical theme of Justice Department , were lost to a monolithic seventeenth 100 fire that destroy much of Brussels during the Nine Years ’ War . The only track record we have leave behind of the house painting is from written descriptions from those who come to visit the works , and a tapestry the artist made a decade after the original works is the closest optical evidence we have of what they looked like . “ Rogier is now well recognise for hisDeposition , but during his lifetime , hisJustice Cyclewas his memorial , ” Charney writes . “ One wonder what unlike , perhaps greater , influence theJustice Cyclemight have had , had fortune countenance it to act as a point of pilgrimage for artist for century more . ”
5. The Amber Room
A huge amount of art disappears duringwartime , whether because of looting or because the works become confirmative damage in conflict . Russia ’s Amber Room was subject to both . In the eighteenth century , Empress Elizabeth of Russia installed numerous wall panels made from thinly slice amber veneering , a gift from the king of Prussia to the Russian tsar 27 years earlier , in a room in her winter palace . Over the years , she and her descendants expanded and redecorated the bejeweled elbow room , ultimately instal 13,000 pound of amber on the rampart . It became live as the Eighth Wonder of the World . But it would n’t live the 20th hundred .
In the advanced era , the touchy panel did not fare well , since key heat made them improbably unannealed . But World War II write doom — despite efforts to hide the way from invading forces , the Nazis pack the panels into 27 crate and embark them to Prussia in 1941 , putting them on partial display at Königsberg Castle . Unfortunately , the castle was ruined by a combination of Allied bombs in 1944 and the three - calendar month military blockade by the Red Army in 1945 . While it ’s potential that some contribution of the elbow room might have make it , only two object have turned up in the last half century — a chest and a marble mosaic , both rediscovered in the late ’ 90s .
The Amber Room was n’t the only major work of artistic production to strike victim to the Third Reich . The Nazis stole hundreds of thousands of paintings from Jewish art dealers and collector during World War II , a big figure of which werenever returnedto their lawful owners . As of 2009 , anestimated 100,000of the 650,000 stolen works had not yet been given back to their original proprietor or their posterity , despite laws like the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 that direct to facilitate the return of Nazi - strip artwork . In some caseful , these posterity have had tosue museumsin order to get their artistic production back .
Even now , conflict provides easy natural covering for would - be art thieves . Between 2003 and 2005 , at the start of the U.S. invasion and job of Iraq , around a one-half million antiquity were slip from Iraqi museums andarchaeological internet site . Unfortunately , artistry is inextricably linked to conflict .
6.ApoxyomentosStatue
While many nontextual matter have been lost to disasters , shipwreck have actually spare some ancient artistry from end . In the ancient reality , metallic element art was often melt down down and recycled for other projects , like make up cannonballs . Statues likethisApoxyomenoswere saved from this fate by virtue of being submersed for centuries . The Croation statue , made in the first or second century CE , was discovered in 1996 , well - preserved at the bottom of the northerly Adriatic Sea .
7. Picasso Paintings Made forLe Mystere Picasso
Sometimes , graphics is put down by the creative person themselves . Pablo Picassomade several work on television camera during the film ofLe Mystère Picasso , but as part of the moving-picture show , those house painting were later destroyed . The whole point was that they would only be viewed through the lens of the movie .
Other creative person throughout account have destroyed their own study because they were dissatisfied with how it turned out . Michelangelo orderedmost of his drawings burned , not wanting to partake in the notes he used to make his sculptures and painting , and as a result , only a fraction survive . More modern artist have burn their work , too : An unhappy Claude Monet destroyed 15 canvass before a 1908 exhibition in Paris , and Gerhard Richter once cut up and burned 60 of his earliest painting , keep only photographs of them .
“ Sometimes , ” Richter said in 2012 , “ when I see one of the photos , I think to myself : That ’s too unsound ; you could have permit this one or that one survive . ”
A variant of this history run in 2018 ; it has been update for 2022 .
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