The case is the largest unsolved art theft in history. The stolen works have been estimated at more than $500 million in current value. Vermeer’s *The Concert* alone has been called the most valuable stolen painting in the world. And the two men who walked out of the museum with it and twelve other pieces—on a cold March night in Boston, thirty-six years ago—have never faced any legal consequence for what they did.
This is the story of what happened, what has been learned, and what the empty frames still mean.
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## Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Collection She Built
To understand the magnitude of what was taken in 1990, you have to understand who assembled the collection and how.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was born in New York City in 1840 to a prosperous family. She married John Lowell Gardner in 1860 and moved to Boston, where she became a prominent figure in the city’s social and intellectual life—conspicuous for her personality in a milieu that valued reserve, interested in art and music and literature with an intensity that was not merely performative.
After her father died in 1891 and left her a substantial inheritance, she began acquiring art systematically. Her first major purchase was *The Concert* by Johannes Vermeer, bought at a Paris auction in 1892. The purchase was guided by a young art historian named Bernard Berenson, who would become her principal advisor for decades. Berenson’s eye and her money combined to produce one of the most remarkable private collections in American history. He helped her acquire nearly seventy works, including pieces by Rembrandt, Botticelli, Titian, and Raphael. He helped her become the first American to own a painting by Botticelli.