# The Concert > Johannes Vermeer - c. 1663-1666 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/johannes-vermeer/vermeer-the-concert/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Johannes Vermeer - **Date:** c. 1663-1666 - **Medium:** Oil on canvas - **Dimensions:** 72.5 x 64.7 cm (28 1/2 x 25 1/2 in.) - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Dutch, seventeenth century - **Current location:** Unlocated. Stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, on 18 March 1990 and not recovered. Legal title remains with the museum. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary An unsigned Vermeer of the mid 1660s, 72.5 by 64.7 centimetres, showing three people making music in a room hung with two other pictures. It is the most valuable unrecovered stolen object in the world, taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on 18 March 1990 by two men in police uniform who were inside the building for eighty-one minutes and left with thirteen works.Its frame is still on the wall of the Dutch Room, empty. That is not a memorial gesture. Isabella Stewart Gardner's will forbids the trustees to change the arrangement of the museum she left, so the frame stays where it was because moving it would be a breach of trust. The museum carried no theft insurance, which means there was no settlement, no subrogation and no insurer with a claim on the picture. Title never moved.In March 2013 the FBI announced that it had identified the thieves and would not name them. The statute of limitations on the theft itself expired in the mid 1990s, so the men who took it cannot now be prosecuted for taking it. Whoever holds it can still be charged with possessing it. Every reproduction on this page, and every reproduction anywhere, predates 1990. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1663-1674** Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, Delft, and Maria de Knuijt `[disputed]` (probable first ownership) Van Ruijven, who died in 1674, bought a large part of Vermeer's output, and the 2023 Rijksmuseum exhibition argued that his wife Maria de Knuijt was the active party. The attachment of this specific picture to them rests on the fact that it can be traced back to the Dissius sale, not on a named document. The catalogue literature marks the link with a query and so does this record. - **1674-1695** Maria de Knuijt, then Magdalena van Ruijven, then Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius, Delft `[disputed]` (inheritance) By descent within one Delft family: van Ruijven's widow, who died in 1681; their daughter Magdalena, who died in 1682; and her widower Jacob Dissius, who died in 1695 with twenty-one Vermeers in his estate inventory. The chain is secure for the group. Its application to this individual canvas is inferred from the 1696 sale. - **1696** Sold at the Dissius sale, Amsterdam, 16 May 1696 `[disputed]` (auction) Probably lot 9. Twenty-one Vermeers were sold together for about 1,500 guilders, roughly seventy guilders each. No buyer is recorded for this lot in the sources consulted, and the lot identification is given as probable rather than certain. - **1696-1780** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) Eighty-four years with no documented owner. The picture reappears in an Amsterdam saleroom in 1780 with no stated history. - **1780-1804** Diederik van Leyden, bought through the dealer A. Delfos `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Johannes Lodewijk Strantwijk sale, Amsterdam, 10 May 1780, lot 150. Delfos bought for the client the catalogue calls the Heer van Vlaardingen, identified as van Leyden. This is the earliest link in the chain with a named agent and a named principal. - **1804-1835** Paillet, Paris, then unrecorded `[documented]` (auction) Diederik van Leyden sale, Paris, conducted by Paillet, 5 November 1804, lot 62, bought by Paillet himself. Where it sat for the next three decades is not recorded. - **1835-1860** Unrecorded `[documented]` (auction) Anonymous sale, Foster, London, 26 February 1835, lot 127. Neither the consignor nor the buyer is named in the catalogue literature. The picture is now in England and nobody knows it is a Vermeer. - **1860-1869** Toothe `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Admiral Lysaght and others sale, Christie's, London, 2 April 1860, lot 49, to a buyer recorded only as Toothe. The picture crosses to Paris at some point before the Demidoff sale of 1869. - **1869** Etienne Joseph Theophile Thore, called Thore-Burger, Paris `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Demidoff sale, Paris, 1 April 1869, lot 14, evidently to Thore-Burger, the critic whose 1866 catalogue in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts had created the modern idea of Vermeer. He died the following month. He owned the picture for about four weeks. - **1869-1892** Apolline Lacroix and her family, Paris `[documented]` (bequest) Thore-Burger left about a hundred and twenty pictures to the family friend Apolline Lacroix, who died in 1896. Her family chose the works for the 1892 auction. The picture spent twenty-three years in private hands in Paris as part of a critic's estate. - **1892-1924** Isabella Stewart Gardner, Boston, bought through Fernand Robert `[documented]` (purchase at auction) Thore-Burger sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 5 December 1892, lot 31. Gardner signalled her bids to her Paris agent Fernand Robert with a handkerchief. The underbidders were agents of the Louvre and of the National Gallery, London, who realised they were competing with each other and withdrew. 29,000 francs at the hammer; 31,175 francs is also published and is the hammer plus the 7.5 per cent Drouot charge. - **1903-1990** Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston `[documented]` (bequest and public display) Fenway Court opened to the public on 1 January 1903 and the picture hung in the Dutch Room on the second floor as P21W27. Lent once, to One Hundred Masterpieces at Copley Hall, Boston, 5 to 28 March 1897, as number 98, under the title The Musicians and in the name of Mrs John L. Gardner. Gardner died in 1924 leaving a will that forbids any rearrangement. - **1990-present** Unknown. Legal title remains with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum `[documented]` (theft) Stolen 18 March 1990 between about 00:30 and 02:45 by two men in Boston police uniform, with twelve other objects. No insurer acquired an interest because the museum carried no theft cover, so title never moved. The FBI said in 2013 that the works were taken to Connecticut and to the Philadelphia area and that some were offered for sale in Philadelphia around 2002 or 2003. Nothing has been recovered. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - The Concert passed through at least six auctions between 1696 and 1892. A price is recorded in the sources consulted for only the last of them. The 1696 Dissius sale is documented as a group result, about 1,500 guilders for twenty-one Vermeers, with no figure for the individual lot. No price at all is recorded for 1780, 1804, 1835, 1860 or 1869. The figures in circulation today, from 250 million dollars for this picture to 600 million for the thirteen stolen objects together, are press and law-enforcement estimates of a hypothetical value; nothing has been appraised, and the museum carried no theft insurance, so no insurance valuation exists either. - **1892-12-05** Hotel Drouot, Paris, Thore-Burger collection, lot 31 - Estimate: Not published in the sources consulted - Hammer: FRF 29,000 - With premium: FRF 31,175 reported, which is the hammer plus 7.5 per cent - Bought by the agent Fernand Robert for Isabella Stewart Gardner, who signalled from the room with a handkerchief. Underbid by agents for the Louvre and the National Gallery, London, who withdrew on realising they were bidding against each other. The Gardner Museum's records give 29,000 francs; 31,175 francs appears elsewhere and is exactly 7.5 per cent higher, the Drouot buyer's charge of the period, so this record reads the first as the hammer and the second as the total and marks the reading as an inference. Dollar equivalents of 5,000 and 6,000 both circulate; both are later conversions by writers rather than figures from the sale. ## Open questions - Where is the painting? The FBI said in 2013 that it had identified the thieves and did not know the location of any of the thirteen objects. Nothing published since has changed that. - What condition is it in? It has been out of museum care since March 1990 and out of its frame since the night of the theft. No conservator has seen it in thirty-six years. - Is 29,000 francs the hammer and 31,175 francs the total? The two published figures differ by exactly 7.5 per cent, the Hotel Drouot buyer's charge of the period, but this record has not seen the sale's proces-verbal and treats the split as an inference. - What did the six recorded auctions between 1696 and 1892 make? No price for this picture is recorded in the sources consulted for the 1696, 1780, 1804, 1835, 1860 or 1869 sales. - What is the exact residuary clause of Isabella Stewart Gardner's 1924 will? The requirement that nothing be moved, sold or added is well attested. The widely repeated further term, that a breach sends the whole collection to be sold for the benefit of Harvard, has not been verified here against the probated instrument. - Why did the Blue Room motion detectors register nobody on the night the Manet was taken from it, when they registered the guard's own rounds earlier the same night? - Was the Concert lot 9 in the Dissius sale of 1696? The identification is given as probable, not certain, in the catalogue literature. - Would a recovery be followed by a reattribution debate? The picture is unsigned, was last examined with pre-1990 equipment, and has been absent through the entire period in which technical analysis of Vermeer was transformed. ## Sources - [1] Essential Vermeer 5.0, 'The Concert by Johannes Vermeer', interactive catalogue entry. Used for the full provenance chain from van Ruijven to the Gardner, the 1696 Dissius and 1892 Drouot lot numbers, the absence of a signature, the range of scholarly dates, the 1897 Copley Hall loan, the inventory number P21W27, and the identification of the Baburen, the Ruisdael-like landscape and the instruments. A specialist secondary source; the primary catalogue entries by Liedtke and Wheelock should replace it. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft'. Used for the timings, the guards, the list of thirteen objects, the reward chronology, the statute of limitations, the value estimates and the named suspects. Tertiary; flagged for replacement with the museum's own chronology and the FBI case file. - [3] Wikipedia, 'The Concert (Vermeer)'. Used for the dimensions, the 250 million dollar figure and its attribution to Boser 2009 and Kurkjian 2015, and the 1892 purchase. Tertiary; flagged for replacement with the Gardner Museum catalogue. - [4] WBUR, 'FBI Says It Has Identified Thieves In Gardner Art Heist', 18 March 2013. Used for who spoke at the press conference, what the Bureau claimed and refused to say, the Connecticut and Philadelphia movement, the attempted Philadelphia sale, the expired statute of limitations and the immunity position. - [5] WBUR, 'Night watchman during notorious 1990 Gardner heist has died', 27 February 2024. Used for Rick Abath's death at fifty-seven in Brattleboro, Vermont, his account and the Blue Room motion-detector anomaly. It does NOT carry any statement that he was charged or not charged: the word does not appear in the article, checked 2026-09-27. - [6] Journal of Art in Society, 'Vermeer's Concert, the Gardner Collection and the Art Heist of the Century'. Used for the 1892 Drouot sale as a sale of the Thore-Burger estate, the handkerchief signal to a male agent, the Louvre and National Gallery as underbidders, the Lacroix bequest of about 120 works, and the hanging in the Dutch Room from 1903. - [7] Tufts University Museum Studies Blog, 'The Contested Legal Legacy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum', 4 March 2022. Used for the terms of the will, that nothing was to be moved, sold or added, and for the 2008 court application and the museum's acknowledgement that the New Wing was technically a breach. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Johannes Vermeer'. Used for the artist dossier: baptism and burial, guild admission and headmanships, the 1653 marriage and conversion, Maria Thins and the Baburen, van Ruijven and de Knuijt, the Dissius inventory of twenty-one pictures, the absence of drawings and pupils, the Uylenburgh authentication panel, the widow's statement to creditors, van Leeuwenhoek as trustee, and the 1866 Gazette des Beaux-Arts catalogue. Tertiary; flagged for replacement with Montias, Vermeer and His Milieu. - [9] Wikipedia, 'Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum'. Used for the 1 January 1903 opening of Fenway Court, Gardner's dates, the one million dollar endowment and the empty frames in the Dutch Room. Tertiary; flagged for replacement with the museum's published history. - [10] The Harvard Crimson, 'How the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Challenges Modern Curation', 13 January 2026. Used for the restriction on display, acquisition and sale continuing after 1924. - [11] Wikimedia Commons file page and Rijksmuseum object record RP-F-2001-7-1696-4, for the heliogravure after The Concert: dating c. 1887 to in or before 1892, plate-maker Simonet, sheet 136 x 116 mm, acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 2001, released CC0. - [12] Wikimedia Commons file page for the FBI photograph of the Dutch Room, released under PD-USGov-FBI, described by the Bureau as showing the empty frame where The Storm on the Sea of Galilee was displayed. - [13] FBI, 'STOLEN MUSEUM ARTWORK: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, March 18, 1990, Boston, Massachusetts', Seeking Information notice, Boston Field Office. Used for the current reward of up to 10 million dollars offered by the museum, the FBI's note that it has no part in administering that reward, the thirteen works, the valuation of more than 500 million dollars, the description of the case as the world's largest property crime and the Bureau's determination that the works were separated after the robbery, with its statement that several pieces are believed to have moved along the Eastern seaboard. Primary. Confirmed 27 September 2026. - [14] FBI, 'Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist', History, Cases and Criminals. Used for the eighty one minutes inside the building, the museum's decision in 1994 to display the empty frames and the Bureau's account of why, the continuing investigation by the Boston Field Office with the museum and the Massachusetts United States Attorney's Office, the listing of the stolen works in the National Stolen Art File and the reward of up to 10 million dollars. Primary. Confirmed 27 September 2026. - [15] United States Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts, press release, 'FBI Provides New Information Regarding the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist', 18 March 2013. Used for the exact words of Richard DesLauriers, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Boston office, that the Bureau believed with a high degree of confidence that the art had been transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region and offered for sale in Philadelphia, that it had identified the men responsible as members of a criminal organisation based in the mid Atlantic states and New England, and that the release itself names none of them, the refusal to name being reported by WBUR; and for United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz on the office's willingness to consider immunity for information leading to the return of the paintings. Primary. - [16] United States Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts, press release, 'Historic Footage Connected to Gardner Museum Burglary Released, Public Assistance Sought', 6 August 2015. Used for the government's own numbered list of the thirteen objects taken, with Vermeer's The Concert first; for the account of the entry, that two men in Boston Police uniforms said they were answering a report of a disturbance and that the guard admitted them against museum policy, that no weapons were seen, that no panic button was pressed and that the thieves took the night's surveillance film; and for the release of the footage from 12:49 a.m. on 17 March 1990. Primary. - [17] FBI National Stolen Art File, entry 'The Concert', reference number 01159. Used for the register entry itself: maker Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas, 72.50 by 64.70 centimetres, category Paintings, time period 1632 to 1675, and the description 'Stolen from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum'. Primary. The file moved to artcrimes.fbi.gov; its search filters on SearchableText and ignores query. Confirmed 27 September 2026. - [18] Leah Willingham, Associated Press, 'What to know about the world's largest art heist from a Boston museum', PBS NewsHour, 26 April 2026. Used for the state of the case in 2026: still unsolved, the largest art theft in history, the works now valued at more than 500 million dollars, the 2013 announcement that the FBI knew who was responsible and declined to name them, the retired lead investigator Geoffrey Kelly and his book Thirteen Perfect Fugitives, the deaths of Robert Donati in 1991 and of George Reissfelder, Kelly's remark that there was enough information at the time that the guard could have been charged and his statement that by the time those questions were examined more closely the statute of limitations had expired. Secondary. - [19] Kristina Rex, 'Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston marks 36 years since historic unsolved heist', CBS Boston, 18 March 2026. Used for the thirty sixth anniversary statement that none of the art has been recovered and no one has been arrested, for the empty frame in the Dutch Room where Vermeer's The Concert hung, for the retired FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly's account that the alleged main players have all since died and for the museum's chief investigator Anthony Amore on the works' expected return. Secondary. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.