**Johannes Vermeer, *The Concert*, c. 1658–1660**
The first major purchase Isabella Gardner made—the acquisition that launched her most serious collecting—was *The Concert* by Vermeer. She bought it at a Paris auction in 1892, guided by Berenson. She paid what was then considered a high price for a work by a Dutch artist who was, in 1892, not yet the canonical figure he has since become.
Vermeer’s reputation grew significantly in the twentieth century, and with it the value and significance of every painting attributed to him. By 2026, the scholarly consensus holds that Vermeer produced fewer than three dozen paintings. Every one is known. The total is so small that the disappearance of any Vermeer is a measurable loss to the entire record of his output.
*The Concert* shows three figures in a domestic interior: a woman at a harpsichord, a second woman singing from a sheet of music, and a man with a lute. The composition is characteristic of Vermeer’s mature domestic subjects—the light coming from windows at the left, the careful rendering of surfaces and textures, the figures in absorbed relationship to each other and to their musical activity. On the wall behind them, two other paintings are visible, both of them identifiable: a landscape and a painting of a procession. Art historians have used the partial views of these smaller works within *The Concert* to trace the history of the painting itself.
The museum has called *The Concert* the most valuable stolen painting in the world. Estimates of its current value have been placed at approximately $200 million, though any figure is speculative—the painting has not been sold, its condition is unknown, and its value would depend on circumstances that cannot currently be assessed.