12 Completely Daring and Totally Outrageous Art Thefts

Art has played a significant role throughout human history - but so has art theft. Art heists have been rampant around the world ever since artwork first became incredibly valuable. This list explores the most outrageous art thefts throughout history. 

These thieves lifted millions of dollars' worth of art and they composed a number of shrewd plans to do so. Some of them used force, while others used distractions like fireworks and alarms. One criminal even replaced over 100 pieces of famous art with his own paintings and drawings. Another thief simply walked out of a museum with a renowned painting stuffed inside his coat. Some of the stolen pieces have since been found, but most of them have never been recovered. Ultimately, every art heist on this list required clever planning, good luck, and immense self-confidence!

Poppy Flowers by Vincent Van Gogh was stolen from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, Egypt, in 2010, 33 years after the last time it was stolen from the same museum.

The thieves got very lucky, since only seven of the usual 24 security guards were working that day. Two Italian suspects were initially detained and questioned because they matched the description and they were traveling with a similarly-sized canvas. However, these two individuals were most likely decoys who adequately distracted investigators while the real thieves escaped successfully.

The painting has never been found, and billionaire Naguib Sawiris is currently offering a $175,000 reward for relevant information. 

Seven paintings were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in the fall of 2012. Some of the stolen pieces were painted by famous artists like Monet, de Haan, and Gauguin. The thieves were able to deactivate the security system and complete the entire heist in only 3 minutes.

Even more outrageous: one of the robbers, Radu Dogaru, threatened to sue the museum for making the robbery too easy. 

While everyone else was celebrating the coming of the new millennium on the night of December 31, 1999, one British thief successfully stole a painting worth nearly $5 million. The heist took place at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.

The thief broke into the museum while the entire city was distracted by loud fireworks. He cut a hole in the museum's roof and dropped down using a rope ladder. Once inside, he released a smoke bomb to obfuscate himself from the cameras once inside. This stolen painting by Paul Cezanne has never been recovered. 

In the winter of 2002, robbers lifted Van Gogh's View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The thieves entered the premises through the roof, and they managed to obscure their faces from the security cameras.

Although two suspects were arrested and later convicted for the robbery in 2004, the paintings have still not been found. There is still a €100,000 reward for anyone with pertinent information. 

In the course of only two years, from 2004 to 2006, a chief librarian at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts gradually replaced 140 paintings with his own works of art. The thief, Xiao Yuan, sold the pieces at various auctions for a total of $6 million. When he was caught, he still had another $11 million worth of stolen art in his possession.

While confessing, Xiao defended himself by claiming that such deceptive thievery was extremely common in the art community. He even claimed that unknown thieves had replaced his fakes with their own fakes.  

In the spring of 1990, two thieves cleverly posed as police officers to steal 13 pieces of art worth $500 million. The art heist occurred in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, where the thieves showed up in fake uniforms and a wax mustache, claiming they had received a call about a disturbance.

After gaining entrance with their false identities, the robbers tied up the security guards and carried out the art theft in under an hour. They stole pieces from well-known artists including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Flinck. These valuable pieces have never been recovered, and the FBI is still offering a $5 million reward for information regarding their whereabouts. 

The famous Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 from the world's largest museum, the Louvre. After two years of intense investigating, the culprit was finally found. He contacted an Italian art dealer, who helped the French authorities by setting up a fake meeting. The thief was revealed to be Vincenzo Peruggia, a former employee of the Louvre.

Peruggia admitted that he decided to steal the painting on an impulse, and he only did so because he noticed that the guard was temporarily out of the room. He simply removed the painting from its frame and he stuffed it in his coat before casually leaving the museum. 

In 2004, four prison guards at Rikers Island plotted together to steal a valuable sketch from their place of employment. The sketch was donated by its creator, Salvador Dali, who felt guilty for declining to teach art classes at the prison. The guards set off a fire alarm to distract the lobby's night guard while they lifted the piece and replaced it with a replica.

This "replica" was drawn very poorly, however - according to those who saw it, it appeared to be the work of a child. Even worse, the thieves stole the original frame, then simply stapled the fake Dali onto the back of the display case.

''It was incredibly stupid,'' said one of the thieves' lawyers. Not surprisingly, the guards were caught immediately and the drawing was recovered.

In 1934, a sneaky thief stole Jan Van Eyck's The Just Judges from Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. The piece is part of a 12-part altarpiece called the Adoration of the Lamb.

The thief reached out to government officials to ransom the piece for one million Belgian Francs. He also left a note stating, "Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles."

On his deathbed, Arsène Goedertier eventually revealed his identity as the painting's thief, but he refused to tell anyone where it was hidden. 

Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence was snatched from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily, during the fall of 1969. The large painting was removed from its frame and folded up tightly by two thieves.

According to his 1996 confession, Francesco Marino Mannoia stole the piece under the command of a powerful mobster. Infamous mobsters Rosario Riccobono, Gerlando Alberti, and Gaspare Spatuzza are all rumored to have owned the stolen painting at different points in time.

Although it has never been found, the painting was scientifically reconstructed last year. (Tragically, the real painting may have been accidentally destroyed while it was hidden in a barn.)