The Concert

You can read about this painting, but you cannot go and see it. Vermeer made it in the 1660s in Delft, three people making music in a quiet room, a man with his back to us between two women at a harpsichord, the light coming in from the left as it almost always does with him. Isabella Stewart Gardner bought it in Paris in 1892 for her Boston museum. Then, in the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police talked their way in and left with 13 works, this one among them. Nothing has been recovered. By the terms of Gardner's will the collection cannot be rearranged, so an empty frame still hangs where the Vermeer was, waiting for it to come back.