騎士

Frans van Mieris the Elder painted this in Leiden around 1658, and it is thought to be a self-portrait: the artist as a jaunty cavalier in a plumed hat, staring out with a half-smile. It is astonishingly small, only about 20 centimetres tall. Van Mieris belonged to the Leiden fijnschilders, the 'fine painters', who worked at miniature scale with a polish so tight the brushmarks disappear. This one came to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney as a gift in 1993. On a Sunday morning in June 2007 it was taken off the wall and carried out of the gallery, and it has not been seen since. It now sits on the FBI's published list of the world's ten most-wanted stolen artworks.