Art theft: the phrase conjures images of beautiful women avoiding fields of lasers; eccentric billionaires enjoying a glass of cognac under the watchful gaze of a master on the mantelpiece. The reality, of course, is often very different. This summer saw the 100th anniversary of the theft of the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. The operation was undertaken by one Vincenzo Perruggia, employed by the Louvre as an unglamorous cleaner.

 

On 21st August 1911, the thief hid in a cupboard until closing time, subsequently slipping out of the museum with the painting under his arm; there was no anonymous backer, no feisty female assistant, and not a single laser. The painting's absence wasn't noticed for another 24 hours. After the alarm had been raised, one of the initial police suspects was Pablo Picasso, who was working as an artist in Montmartre.

 

 

 

The real culprit was apprehended in 1913, when Perruggia attempted to sell Leonardo's masterpiece to a Florentine art dealer. The thief claimed his motives had been nationalistic, and that he had been trying to return the painting to his homeland, Italy; as a result, he was sentenced to a mere twelve months in prison. The Mona Lisa made its way back to the Louvre, where it is now protected by a sheet of bulletproof glass to ensure its future survival.

The Mona Lisa was recovered intact, but other works of art have been less fortunate, lost from public view forever. In 1990, thirteen works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, including famous works such as Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Vermeer's The Concert. The paintings remain missing to this day, and empty frames hang in their places in the museum.

 

More recently in 2008, four paintings were stolen from the EG Buhrle Foundation in Zurich. Two were subsequently discovered in a nearby parking lot, but the others - Cézanne's The Boy in the Red Vest and Degas' Count Lepic and His Daughters - remain missing, perhaps forever.

Indeed masterpieces are not only lost through organised theft. In 2007 David Rockefeller sold his Rothko painting White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), now often known as the 'Rockefeller Rothko', for $72.8 million at auction to an unknown bearded bidder, who paid in Russian roubles. Sadly, the painting was transferred to a private collection and has never been seen since.

Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito stunned the private art world in 1990 when he bought Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet and Renoir's Bal au Moulin de la Galette for a combined price of around $160 million. The greater shock, however, came when he announced that he wished to have the paintings cremated with him on his death; Saito died in 1996 and the paintings' whereabouts remain unknown. Fortunately for the art-loving public, both Van Gogh and Renoir painted alternative versions of these works, both of which hang in the Musée d'Orsay.

The theft of the Mona Lisa provided the painting with the notoriety and iconic status it holds today. Before 1911, the painting was displayed alongside several other works, and it was only after its recovery that it was given an entire wall to itself. Paintings which have disappeared more recently, however, rarely have their fame increased by their theft; most members of the public remain unaware that the works are no longer on public display.

In today's digital world, detailed photographic reproductions of most of these works can be found online, allowing them to stay in public circulation, of a sort. With resources such as the Google Art Project and Artfinder, the necessity of viewing a painting in its physical form is diminishing. Indeed the detailed digital zoom afforded by the Google Art Project allows you to get as close, if not closer, to the painting than you would be able to in a gallery, without the need to contend with jostling tourists.

Nevertheless, viewing a painting through the medium of a computer screen leaves something to be desired. The texture of the paint can only be imagined, and you get no sense of scale: it seems a shame that these missing paintings can only be appreciated in this format. Of course, thousands of paintings are on show to the public today, thanks to what seems to be a universal preserving spirit. We need only spare a thought for those missing masterpieces in order to appreciate the vast collections of artwork to be discovered up and down the country.