The Gardner Museum wasn’t the first story of missing art.

Across history, paintings, sculptures, relics, and artifacts have crossed borders, changed hands, disappeared, resurfaced, and entered museums and private collections around the world. Some arrived through purchase, some through excavation, some through war, and others through circumstances still debated today.

History remembers them as masterpieces.

History also remembers them as missing.

The question isn’t who stole it.

The question is when the story began.