The museum now offers a separate $100,000 reward specifically for information leading to the return of the finial. The separate reward acknowledges that the finial may have ended up in different hands than the paintings and may be in a location entirely unconnected to the rest of the stolen collection.
**Chinese Bronze Beaker (Ku), c. 1200–1100 B.C.**
The oldest object in the stolen collection is not a painting or a work on paper but a bronze ritual vessel from the Shang dynasty, the earliest historically documented Chinese dynasty. The beaker—a *ku*, a type of ritual vessel used for wine offerings in ancestral rites—dates from approximately 1200 to 1100 B.C.
At the time of its manufacture, the Shang dynasty governed the Yellow River valley. Writing existed in Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, though the script was quite different from classical Chinese characters. Bronze casting was a sophisticated technology in China at this period; bronze ritual vessels were among the most prized objects a nobleman or ruler could possess, symbolizing ancestral connection and political legitimacy.
The vessel survived more than three thousand years to reach Isabella Gardner’s collection. She acquired it in 1923, the year before her death—one of her last acquisitions.
In the Dutch Room, it stood before a portrait, serving in Gardner’s arrangement as one of those juxtapositions she favored: an object from one culture and era in close proximity to a work from another, the combination making something that neither piece could make alone.