Displaying items by tag: eagle

A $5 million reward for masterworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum a quarter century ago has failed to lead to their recovery, prompting authorities Tuesday to announce a new offer: $100,000 for the return of one of the least valuable items, a bronze eagle finial.

The reward far exceeds the value of the 10-inch-high gilded eagle, which was swiped from the top of a pole supporting a silk Napoleonic flag. It was taken along with 12 other pieces valued at $500 million, including masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Manet, in what remains the world’s largest art heist and one of Boston’s most baffling crime mysteries.

A rare Roman eagle in astoundingly good condition was recently discovered in London by archaeologists. The work is being called one of the best pieces of Romano-British art ever found. The sculpture, which depicts an eagle with a writhing snake in its beak, is made of Cotswold limestone and dates back to the late 1^st century or 2^nd century AD. The figure was found six weeks ago, encased in mud at the bottom of a ditch during a 10-day excavation of a former Roman cemetery.

Scholars are anxious to research the work, which will be on display at the Museum of London for the next six months. The only comparable discovery in London is a severely damaged bird found at a Roman villa site in Somerset in the 1920s.

Experts believe that the recently discovered sculpture would have been commissioned for the tomb of a wealthy or commanding Roman.