Also in the Dutch Room: *A Lady and Gentleman in Black*, another Rembrandt from 1633, depicting a formal double portrait of a couple in the dress of their era. And a tiny self-portrait etching by Rembrandt—smaller than a postage stamp, acquired by the museum in 1886—that hung nearby.
On the same wall where the Rembrandt seascape hung, facing it across the Dutch Room: *The Concert* by Johannes Vermeer, painted between approximately 1658 and 1660. It shows three musicians—a woman at a harpsichord, a woman singing, a man with a lute—in a domestic interior. On the back wall of the room in the painting, two other paintings are visible; the compositions of those smaller works have helped art historians trace the piece’s history. There are fewer than three dozen paintings securely attributed to Vermeer. *The Concert* was the first of them Gardner acquired, in 1892—the purchase that effectively began her most serious collecting phase. The museum has described it as the most valuable stolen painting in the world. Estimates place its current value at approximately $200 million, though the actual figure would depend on conditions that cannot currently be determined.
Also in the Dutch Room: *Landscape with an Obelisk* by Govaert Flinck, painted in 1638. Flinck was a student of Rembrandt, and the painting was once attributed to the master himself—which may explain why the thieves took it. The misattribution was not corrected until after the theft.
A Chinese bronze beaker from the Shang dynasty, approximately 3,200 years old—one of the oldest objects in the museum—stood in the Dutch Room in front of a portrait. Gardner had acquired it in 1923.