El camino de Sèvres a París

Corot painted this quiet view in the 1850s, a dusty country road climbing away from the village of Sevres with the haze of Paris low on the horizon. It is a modest, silvery thing, the kind of unshowy landscape he made by the hundred and that later painters loved him for. A collector left it to the Louvre in 1902, and there it hung for most of a century. Then on a Sunday morning in May 1998, while the museum was open to visitors, someone lifted it off the wall and walked out. There was no alarm and no usable witness. The Louvre still lists it as part of the collection, size and all, with a note that it has been missing since that day. It has never been found.