Courtesy: C.Cordes/Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum
Rembrandt's drawing of a dog has been in the collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, Germany, since 1770, but was long thought to be the work of a different artist.
Courtesy Tajan
In 2016, a drawing attributed to Italian master Leonardo da Vinci was discovered in Paris, after a portfolio of works was brought to Tajan auction house for valuation by a retired doctor. It was valued at 15 million euros ($16 million).
Courtesy Tajan
The drawing also features sketches of light and shadows and notes on the back.
Courtesy National Trust for Scotland
While researching for an episode of BBC's "Britain's Lost Masterpieces" series at the National Trust for Scotland's Haddo House collection in Aberdeenshire , art historian Bendor Grosvenor and a team of experts found a painting that could have been painted by artist Raphael.
Reuters
In April 2016, a painting believed to be by Caravaggio was found in an attic in France. Experts said it could be worth $136 million.
Courtesy National Trust for Scotland
The work was originally purchased for $25 dollars at the end of the 19th century. It could now be worth $26 million.
JEAN-PIERRE MULLER/AFP/Getty Images
In 1911, Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian who had been a handyman for the museum. The famous painting was recovered two years later.
courtesy Art Recovery
A statue called "Young Girl with Serpent" by Auguste Rodin was stolen from a home in Beverly Hills, California, in 1991. It was returned after someone offered it on consignment to Christie's auction house. Rodin, a French sculptor considered by some aficionados to have been the father of modern sculpture, lived from 1840 until 1917. His most famous work, "The Thinker," shows a seated man with his chin on his hand.
AFP/Getty Images
Picasso's "La Coiffeuse" ("The Hairdresser") was discovered missing in 2001 and was recovered when it was shipped from Belgium to the United States in December 2014. The shipper said it was a $37 piece of art being sent to the United States as a Christmas present. The feds say it was actually a stolen Picasso, missing for more than a decade and worth millions of dollars.
ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images
Italy's Culture Ministry unveils two paintings by the French artists Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard on April 2, 2014. The paintings, worth millions of euros, were stolen from a family house in London in 1970, abandoned on a train and then later sold at a lost-property auction, where a factory worker paid 45,000 Italian lire for them -- roughly equivalent to 22 euros ($30).
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
A Renoir painting finished in the 1800s, loaned to a museum, reported stolen in 1951 and then bought at a flea market in 2010 has to be returned to the museum, a judge ruled on January 10, 2014. The 5½-by-9-inch painting, titled "Landscape on the Banks of the Seine," was bought for $7 at a flea market by a Virginia woman. The estimated value is between $75,000 and $100,000.
Courtesy Interpol
Seven famous paintings were stolen from the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2012, including Claude Monet's "Charing Cross Bridge, London." The paintings, in oil and watercolor, include Pablo Picasso's "Harlequin Head," Henri Matisse's "Reading Girl in White and Yellow," Lucian Freud's "Woman with Eyes Closed" and Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge," seen here. Works by Gauguin and Meyer de Haan were also taken.
New York County DA Office
Eight months after Salvador Dali's "Cartel de Don Juan Tenorio" was stolen in a New York gallery, a Greek national was indicted on a grand larceny charge in 2013.
Courtesy wga.hu
In 1473, Hans Memling's "The Last Judgment" was stolen by pirates and became the first documented art theft.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Adam Worth, the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's diabolical character Moriarty, stole "Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire," painted by Thomas Gainsborough in 1876.
REUTERS/Chris Pizzello /Landov
Among their many crimes, the Nazis plundered precious artworks as they gained power during World War II. "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, was confiscated from the owner when he fled from Austria.
REUTERS /PHILIP SEARS /LANDOV
Many works of art that were taken by the Nazis were never recovered. Others were returned after years of legal battles. "Christ Carrying the Cross," by Italian artist Girolamo de' Romani, was returned to his family in 2012.
REUTERS/Handout /Landov
"The Scream" was one of two Edvard Munch paintings that were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, in 2004.
REUTERS/Nelson Antoine /Landov
In 2007, Pablo Picasso's oil painting ''Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" was taken from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art. It was recovered two years later.

Story highlights

Chalk drawing of dog is one of very few surviving Rembrandt animal studies

Museum hails discovery of artwork's true authorship as "a sensation"

CNN  — 

A chalk drawing of a dog has been identified as a work by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn, after it spent almost 250 years mistakenly credited to a German painter.

The discovery of the work’s true author has been described as “a sensation” by the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, Germany.

Known as “the Braunschweig terrier,” the image is believed to date from around 1637; it has been in the museum’s collection since 1770.

Professor Thomas Doring, the museum’s curator of prints and drawings, was first alerted to the error two years ago while cataloging the museum’s 10,000 drawings for a digital archive.

Old sketch is da Vinci worth $16M, retired doctor is told

“It’s been on display for decades under the name of Johann Melchior Roos,” he told CNN, “so the idea that this could be a Rembrandt was never considered before.

“But the boldness of the strokes, the variations in the shading from very gentle to quite violent and the expressive gaze [of the dog] – these are very typical idiosyncrasies of Rembrandt’s work.”

Doring said his experience cataloging drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils during an earlier project was key to the discovery.

“I was used to looking out for the differences between Rembrandt’s work and drawings by other artists,” he explained.

To find out whether his suspicions were correct, he visited Vienna, Amsterdam and Paris, studying Rembrandt drawings and enlisting the help of other Rembrandt experts.

De Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland
This drawing of a lion (1650-1959), belonging to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is one of the few surviving animal studies by Rembrandt van Rijn.

He said the response to his painstaking work had been unanimously positive.

“Two of the three leading scholars of Rembrandt’s drawings told me they were fully convinced that this is a Rembrandt,” he said. “Since then, the third has contacted me to say he also has no doubts.”

“It’s extremely rare for all of the experts in a field to agree on an issue as controversial as this,” said Doring.

Rembrandt included many dogs in his paintings, and practiced by sketching animal studies in chalk.

Courtesy Rijksmuseum
Rembrandt van Rijn's "The Night Watch" (1642) from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

According to a statement released by the museum, “the Braunschweig terrier” is very similar to the barking, jumping dog in Rembrandt’s 1642 painting “The Night Watch”, the star attraction at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

The dog drawing, now with the correct artist’s name attached, is to go back on display at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum as part of an exhibition that opens in April.