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Rated 3 out of 5 by Ed in Maryland from Interesting Concept, Uneven Execution The course is a good adjunct to any broad study of art but it is uneven in the quality of the lectures. It consists mostly of the professor talking with brief pictures of the art. We would have preferred more exposure to the art and less of the lecturer. Lecture 7 (Art Lost by Accident) is the weakest, with a mind-numbing recitation of lost art and artists. It's the equivalent of teaching about baseball by reciting the batting averages of every major league player. The concept of a museum of lost art is an excellent teaching technique.

Date published: 2023-09-22

Rated 5 out of 5 by leadsled from Very enlightening As the name implies, this course is about lost art. In particular, it's about great works of art that have been lost by war, fire, flooding, earthquakes, vandalism, and outright theft. In some cases, the circumstances surrounding the losses are so bizarre that they defy categorization. Professor Charney is very knowledgeable and articulate, and does an excellent job of guiding the viewer through centuries of missing masterpieces. His lectures are profusely illustrated by color photos. The stories related during these twelve videos are fascinating. Highly recommended.

Date published: 2023-09-21

Rated 5 out of 5 by Denise1016 from Enjoyable course This was just a nice easy informative course. Nothing too heavy - and expanded my somewhat basic knowledge of fine art. I've seen a few of these works in museums so it was interesting learning the back story. And in previous Wondrous courses on art many of the artists have been discussed.

Date published: 2023-09-17

Rated 5 out of 5 by RoyLas53 from Fun while educational. Can't beat that combo. It's a fun and entertaining tour de force through the subject matter. I found it to be one of the most instructive art appreciation lectures I have ever 'attended.' Fast and furious, spanning centuries, yet it seems very well paced. The one star review below may be accurate as to nit picked 'errors,' but to forego this series (and to enjoy how the professor fluently pronounces hundreds of names of both artists and works that are tongue twisters to folks such as me -- vr-MEHR notwithstanding), would be a great loss to the student who enjoys art for the sake of art.

Date published: 2023-09-17

Rated 5 out of 5 by Piperpuppy from Excellent course start to finish Loved the professor's knowledge and ability to move from topic to topic and inspire me to continue to learn more. Like an excellent novel, I really did not want the course to end. Please ignore the one negative review and dive into this course. Well worth the price and the time spent consuming the lectures.

Date published: 2023-09-15

Rated 5 out of 5 by Kathi L from For me...absolutely fascinating and beautiful This is a way of looking art, at art history, at artists, and the sometimes very dark art underworld that I found informative and fascinating. It was filled with ideas and information that I either had never known anything about, never thought to ask myself, or never gave myself time to explore. One thing it brought for me was emotion. Sadness at art lost, or never seen. But also joy in discussing the very important scientific research and methods that are giving us art we never even knew was lost, uncovering without destruction the art under our masterpieces, or art like the Mona Lisa, that has been digitally restored to some degree to give us a better idea of what the original colors might have been. I had not known of the copy that existed that might give a better understanding of the colors of the original. I could go on but it was a brilliant series for me. I would so love another lecture series by this same lecturer. And, except for the artifice in production with starting each lecture with the lecturer against one background and then switching (or teleporting) quickly to another, with neither background fully defining the lecture topic, I just loved the production (and music). The idea of a virtual museum both the lecturer and Wondrium visually explored beautifully and creatively. I really felt I had gone to this magical museum. More lecture series from this delightful gentleman, please.

Date published: 2023-09-09

Rated 5 out of 5 by BigWally from A fabulous course!!! For me this is one of the most fascinating courses Wondrium/The Great Courses has ever offered. Noah Charney is clearly a brilliant young man who presents the material in a well-organized and very informative fashion. He "dissects" interesting cases of stolen, looted, damaged,, etc. art, and then he offers his perspective on each case. I liked the course so well that I am now starting to re-watch it even though I completed only a week of so ago.

Date published: 2023-09-06

Rated 5 out of 5 by kgeb from Fantastic, best series so far (20+) This is a great series with lots of graphics, examples, references, ect. Good enough to be on Netflix. Enjoy this one, I certainly did! I'd give it more stars if I could. Ignore the bad review, watch the series and make up your own mind. I'm 71 and pretty much loved every chapter. Have fun!!

Date published: 2023-09-06

Overview

Imagine a Museum of Lost Art. If this imaginary museum contained just the artwork we knew was lost—whether from theft, purposeful destruction, vandalism, war, or the forces of nature—it would still contain more masterpieces than those in all the world’s current museums combined. In Lost Art: The Stories of Missing Masterpieces, art historian Noah Charney guides you through just such an imaginary museum. In 12 fascinating lectures accompanied by stunning graphics, you will learn the stories behind the theft and/or destruction of some of the world’s most famous pieces of art.

About

Noah Charney

Just as we should not forget history since it has passed, or loved ones who have passed away, so too we must keep lost art and monuments in our thoughts as we study history.

ALMA MATER

University of Ljubljana

Noah Charney is a writer and art historian who specializes in the study of art crime and forgeries. He has taught at Yale University, Brown University, the American University of Rome, and the University of Ljubljana. He is the best-selling author of more than 20 books, and his works have been translated into 14 languages. He founded the Association for Research into Crimes against Art and is a teacher in its Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection.

By This Expert

Lost Art: The Stories of Missing Masterpieces

Trailer

01: Welcome to the Museum of Lost Art

Discover some of the most important works that would be located in an imaginary “Museum of Lost Art.” Learn about The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, one of the most famous pieces of art in Europe when completed in 1432. But in the subsequent 600 years, it has been the victim of 13 different crimes, and, thus, constantly in and out of that imaginary museum.

31 min

02: Hall of Heists: Thieves and the Art They Steal

Annually, in Italy alone, 20,000–30,000 works of art are reported stolen. The US Department of Justice ranks art crime as the third highest-grossing criminal trade. Who steals art, and what do they really want from it? Learn about some of the most famous art heists in history, from Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

30 min

03: The Mob Wing: Organized Crime in Stolen Art

Most art theft involves organized crime at some step along the route—stolen art being much more difficult to trace than bank accounts and electronic transfers. Discover the mob connections to the still unsolved mystery of 1969 of the stolen Nativity by Caravaggio, and the 13 works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990.

29 min

04: Gallery of Fakes: Forgeries and Attribution

Learn about the relationship between connoisseurship, provenance, and forensics. Can forensics alone—even using the latest technology—accurately identify authentic paintings from those that are forged by a great student of the master? Or does the answer still come down to opinion, as it did with A City on a Rock by “Goya”?

30 min

05: The War Wing: Art Plundered through Conflict

Explore the long and troubled relationship between war and art destruction—from the 212 BCE Roman army’s defeat and looting of the Greek city of Siracusa to the 2022 Russian destruction of the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine. Learn about Hitler’s Altaussee art cache and the complicated issue of art repatriation from WWII.

30 min

06: The Hall of Vandals: Wreckers and Iconoclasts

Learn about the difference between iconoclasm and vandalism regarding the destruction of art. Can acts of iconoclasm be justified if the perpetrator doesn’t consider the piece to be “art”? What about modern-day destruction of a statue of a despised dictator? Explore many acts of religious iconoclasm, including the 2001 destruction of the 16th-century Buddha Statues at Bamiyan by the Taliban.

30 min

07: Gallery of Misfortune: Art Lost by Accident

Much of art is fragile and can be destroyed in an instant by various types of accidents—from a museum visitor tripping over his shoelaces at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 2006 and falling into a Ming dynasty vase to fires or shipwrecks. Learn about the great fire of 1698 at Whitehall Palace in London that destroyed works by Michelangelo, Holbein, and Bernini.

29 min

08: Disaster Wing: Art against the Forces of Nature

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, an estimated 1.5 million tons of lava and ash were spewed over the nearby landscape every second. In addition to people and animals, the eruption smothered uncounted paintings, frescoes, and other artworks, lost for 18 centuries—lost and preserved. Learn about art damage from earthquakes, lightning, and floods, and how some art has been salvaged.

32 min

09: No Bequest: Art Destroyed by Artists and Owners

Michelangelo destroyed scores of his own in-progress drawings to make sure no one knew how hard he had to work on a piece. Botticelli sacrificed his own works to Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities in a fit of piety. And other artists destroy their own “imperfect” pieces in sheer frustration. Explore this unusual phenomenon that keeps us from enjoying countless numbers of artistic works we otherwise would have had today.

28 min

10: The Basement: Strange and Unsolved Cases

Explore the stories of many lost artworks for which we have no acceptable explanation. And learn about strange “one-off” situations such as The Rescue by American sculptor Horatio Greenough, who said it “depicted the triumph of the whites over the savage tribes.” Previously located at the US Capitol, a joint resolution to the House recommended the statue “be ground into dust and scattered to the four winds.”

29 min

11: Not in the Vault: Fabled Art That Never Was

What happened to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Leonardo’s Medusa Shield, and the Three Sacred Treasures of Japan? Or is it they simply never existed at all? Explore the many theories about these items, as well as the possibly fabled cities of El Dorado and Atlantis, and other items of modern times. Were they purely imaginary or were they partly real? And will we ever know with certainty?

30 min

12: Lost and Found: Preserving and Restoring Art

The good news is that lost art does not have to stay lost forever. Art can now be digitally reproduced with no ill effects to the original piece, which now allows us to enjoy detailed replicas of items such as 36,000-year-old paintings. Learn about the amazing, full-sized, precise replica of the French Chauvet Cave painting. Museums worldwide have digitized artwork to make tens of thousands of pieces available to all of us.

34 min