This is a list of 8 great works of art (well – maybe one is only nominally so) that were found in unusual places. It makes you wonder how many great works of art are lost to the world simply because no one is looking in the right place!
1. In a farmer’s field
In 1820, a Greek peasant named Yorgos was digging in his field on the island of Milos when he unearthed several carved blocks of stone. He burrowed deeper and found four statues – three figures of Hermes and one of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Three weeks later, the Choiseul archeological expedition arrived by ship, purchased the Aphrodite, and took it to France. Louis XVIII gave it the name Venus de Milo and presented it to the Louvre where it became one of the most famous works of art in history.
2. Beneath a street
On February 21, 1978, electrical workers were putting down lines on a busy street corner in Mexico city when they discovered a 20 ton stone bas-relief of the Aztec night goddess, Coyolxauqui. It is believed to have been sculpted in the early fifteenth century and buried prior to the destruction o the Aztec civilisation by the Spanish conquistadors in 1521. The stone was moved 200 yards from the site to the Museum of the Great Temple.
3. In a hole in the ground
In 1978 more than 500 movies dating from 1903 to 1929 were dug out of a hole in the ground of Dawson City, Yukon. Under normal circumstances, the 35mm nitrate films would have perished, but the permafrost preserved them perfectly.
4. Under a bed
Joanne Perez, the widow of vaudeville performer Pepito the Spanish Clown, cleaned out the area underneath her bed and discovered the only existing copy of the pilot for the TV series I Love Lucy. Pepito had coached Lucille Ball and had guest-starred in the pilot. Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz, had given it to Pepito as a gift in 1951 and it had remained under the bed for thirty years.
5. On a wall
A middle-aged couple in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, asked an art prospector to appraise a painting in their home. While he was there, he examined another painting that the couple had thought was a reproduction of a work by Van Gogh. It turned out to be an 1886 original. On March 10, 1991, the painting Still Life with Flowers sold at auction for $1.4m (US).
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