Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was one of the most famous women in Britain when Gainsborough painted her around 1785, as much for her Whig politics as for the wide black hat she made the height of fashion. But the portrait became far more notorious for what happened to it. It vanished for decades, turned up in the 1830s cut down to fit over a schoolmistress's fireplace, and in 1876 sold at auction for 10,000 guineas, the highest price ever paid for a painting at the time. Days later a thief named Adam Worth, the criminal Scotland Yard called the Napoleon of Crime, cut it from its frame in the night to raise bail money for his brother. He kept it hidden for 25 years, and the painting only returned to Chatsworth, the family's house, in 1994.