Stolen stained-glass window returned to Worcester Art Museum

Art from a Boston church has resurfaced 49 years after it was stolen. The Worcester Art Museum announced Tuesday, Nov. 19, that the missing piece, one of the panels from a triptych stained-glass window, had been reunited with the other two panels already in its possession.

The window was made by Tiffany Studios in 1899 as part of a set that was installed in the Mount Vernon Congregational Church in Boston. The congregation relocated in the 1970s and in 1975 it presented the Worcester Art Museum with the three-piece window, titled "Angel of Resurrection." Only two of the panels made it to the art museum. The righthand panel had disappeared when it was being prepared for transportation, according to the Worcester Art Museum’s press release.

The 125-year-old window depicts a field of Easter lilies framed by a pair of columns. Its whereabouts had remained a mystery for the past half-century. The absence was noted in an exhibition that opened in 2018 titled “Radiance Rediscovered: Stained Glass by Tiffany and La Farge.” The museum presented the two pieces it had alongside a reproduction of the missing window.

In 2023, researchers at a New York Auction house identified the panel with the help of the Art Loss Register database despite the work having been tampered with over the years. The top third of the 2-meter tall window remains missing and the dedication on the bottom was removed, likely in an attempt to make the piece easier to sell.

The panels are currently not on display, but the Worcester Art Museum told WBUR that it plans to unveil the reunited works in the coming year, alongside the context of the piece’s history.

“Certainly that's an intrigue in our window,” said Claire Whitner, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs. “It's been out in the world for a half a century. We'll certainly talk about how it looks different from the other panels that are here. It's had a different history now for some time from the other panels, but it's an exciting opportunity to bring things back together.”

“Angel of Resurrection” isn’t the first work to have been stolen from the museum’s collection. Four artworks by Rembrandt, Picasso and Paul Gauguin were taken and a security guard was shot in a 1972 heist. Those works were returned later that year. The recent addition of the window encourages Whitner when it comes to the many other lost and stolen artworks in the art world.

“It keeps hope for other paintings that are out there in the world or other objects that are missing,” she said. “They may always come back.”