Friday, 23 December 2011

Top 10 World Looted Art.

For millennia, artworks have been looted during times of war. By the time Alexander the Great invaded Egypt in 332 BCE, the tombs of almost all the Pharaohs had already been looted, and as recently as the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, thieves looted Baghdad's national museum. Here're selected top 10 of the world looted art.

The sack of Jerusalem, from the inside wall of the Arch of Titus, Rome



Virgin and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Stanisław by Palma il Giovane, was looted by Napoleon and
returned to 
Warsaw in the 1820s. It was later destroyed by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising.

The March of the SilenusPeter Paul Rubens, 1620s. This painting, looted from Warsaw in 1656 by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburgwas displayed in Berlin's Gemäldegalerie till 1944 (missing).  

The Sistine Madonna by Raphael, looted by the Soviets after World War II, and returned to the
 Dresden Gallery (
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister) in East Germany in 1955.

The so-called Priam's Treasure, looted from Troy by the German archaeologist,Heinrich Schliemann.
Today much of the treasure is housed in Moscow's Pushkin Museum.

The National Museum of Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A hole caused by a shell can be seen in the
wall above the tank. The museum was looted after the invasion and many 
antiquities were missing or destroyed. 

Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek vase, stolen from an Etruscan tomb and smuggled from Italy,
returned to Italy by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006

Throne of Stanisław August Poniatowski displayed in the Moscow Kremlin. The throne was looted after
collapse of the 
November Uprising in the 1830s. In the 1920s the Soviet Union government returned it to
 Poland
, yet it was deliberately destroyed by the Germans during the World War II.

Rembrandt's Descent from the Crosswas looted in 1806 by French soldiers from the Landgrave of
 
Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), Germany, current location: Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by General Omar N. Bradley,
and Lieutenant General 
George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures hidden in a salt mine in Germany.







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