Which Is The Most Famous Stolen Painting?

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa can almost certainly be said to be the world's most famous piece of art, and can therefore also be said to be the subject of the most famous theft. In 1911 it was stolen from the Salon Carré, where it had hung for five years. Although Pablo Picasso was at first suspected of the crime, it was eventually revealed to be the work of a master forger who intended to copy the painting and sell the forgeries as the stolen original. The painting was recovered several years later when the thief attempted to sell it to a Florentine art dealer. This precipitated its eventual move to the Louvre, where it now hangs.

Much publicity has also been given to the recent theft of various paintings by Edward Munch. This spate began in 1994, when a version of The Scream, Munch's most famous work, of which he painted several versions, was stolen from Oslo's National Gallery. Another version of the painting was stolen, along with a piece entitled Madonna, by the same artist, was taken by gunpoint from the Munch Museum in August 2004. Similarly, three more works were stolen from a hotel room in Oslo in March 2005, although these were recovered later in the day.

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