A US$28 million Picasso masterpiece was missing for 20 years, until the art world’s ‘Indiana Jones’ took the case

The painting was the Saudi prince’s closely guarded secret.

During the three months of the year when Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Abdulmalik Al-Sheikh cruised the sea aboard his 246-foot super yacht, the Coral Island, the canvas hung from a wall inside the luxury boat, wired to an alarm system, reportedly part of a floating museum of artwork worth hundreds of millions of dollars the deep-pocketed Saudi royal family member kept on board. But this particular piece – Buste de Femme (Dora Maar), a 1938 painting by Pablo Picasso – was not for show.

“None of the owner’s friends, except for one other person, knew he owned the painting,” an investigator told The Independent in 1999. “Last year when he was entertaining guests, he had the painting removed because he didn’t want anyone to know he had it.”

In March 1999, the Coral Island was bobbing at the docks of Antibes, a resort town on the French Riviera. The yacht was scheduled to travel to Barcelona for maintenance, The Independent reported. Workmen were already splashing new layers of paint on the walls. The Picasso was taken from its usual place and wrapped up for travel to a bank vault where it would be kept while the boat was being renovated. The painting was locked away in a room on the yacht on March 6, 1999.

But when workers came to fetch the Picasso on March 11, the painting was gone. “This is one of the strangest art robberies I have come across and we still have no clues,” an investigator hired to track down the stolen canvas told The Independent.