In March 1990 two men disguised as Boston police officers entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and conducted what remains the most significant art heist ever pulled off. Among the thirteen artworks stolen from the museum's collection was Jan Vermeer's The Concert, a priceless painting and Isabella Stewart Gardner's first major acquisition for what would become one of the world's most spectacular private art collections. Like the other artworks stolen from the museum in 1990, The Concert has never been recovered. And as if the mystery of its current whereabouts were not sufficient, The Concert offers tantalizing intrigue through its vaguely suggestive details of intimate music making. The following is a flight of fancy inspired by The Concert.
Light streamed through fluffy clouds in dazzling shafts, the dust of the day sparkling as the city awoke.
