3. The Storm on the Sea of Galilee would fetch $10 million at auction, if only it hadn’t been stolen in the ‘art crime of the century’ back in 1980
If you go into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, you will find several empty frames hanging on the wall. It’s been this way since the spring of 1980. That was when a group of thieves made off with 13 works of art. Of them, Rembrandt’s depiction of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee is one of the most striking, if not the most valuable. According to the most conservative estimates, it would probably fetch at least $10 million at auction.
Rembrandt van Rijn is easily one of the most famous of the so-called Dutch Masters, painters who created their masterpieces during the Dutch Golden Age of culture. He was famous for his use of light and color but only ever painted one seascape. That seascape, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, depicts the incident recorded in the Gospel of Saint Mark. In the painting, Jesus is shown calming the storm while his 12 disciples sit in panic. Curiously, there is an additional man on the boat and many art historians believe that this is Rembrandt himself. The inclusion of this self-portrait only adds to the value of the work, something the thieves who struck that March morning surely knew.
It was a normal morning at the Boston museum. Then, out of nowhere, two men posing as policemen turned up. They talked their way inside and then, once inside, tied up the security guards. Over the next hour, they made off with 13 works of art, all of them originally purchased by the noted collector Isabella Stewart Gardner. It was, the FBI noted, the single biggest theft of private property in American history. Indeed, it’s estimated that the thieves got away with $500 million worth of art. The museum put up a substantial reward, now standing at $10 million. However, the crime remains unsolved and Rembrandt’s acclaimed seascape remains missing.