Austrian Family Wants Vermeer Painting ReturnedBy STAN PARCHIN September 9, 2009Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632-1675). The Art of Painting (ca. 1666-68). Oil on canvas. 120 x 100 cm (47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in.). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photograph courtesy of Flickr. Agence France-Presse reported on September 6, 2009 that the descendents of an important Austrian family are seeking the return of The Art of Painting (ca. 1666-68), an oil on canvas masterpiece by Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) on view in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1946. The heirs of Count Jaromir Czernin (1908-1966), whose wife was Jewish, claim the largest of Vermeer's 36 known works, owned by the aristocrat's predecessors since the 19th Century, was sold by force in 1940 to German dictator Adolf Hitler, who intended to place it in his planned Fuehrer Museum. In contradiction of a 1923 Austrian law, Czernin attempted to sell The Art of Painting to American philanthropist and collector Andrew W. Mellon in 1935 for a reported $1 million. The work's purchase and export were thwarted. Andreas Theiss, the attorney for Czernin's descendents, asserts that in exchange for the family's protection, Hitler acquired Vermeer's composition for 1 million Reichsmarks, not the 1.65 million recorded. The heirs' request for restitution, filed on August 31, 2009, was received by the Austrian culture ministry and will be sent to a committee charged with resolving such issues. Czernin unsuccessfully claimed ownership of the painting through the mid-1950s. The count's attempts at restitution and those of his family in the 1960s were rejected by the Austrian government because evidence indicates that Vermeer's work was sold voluntarily and at a fair price. The Art of Painting was last seen stateside in Vermeer and the Delft School, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's hugely successful special exhibition (March 8-May 27, 2001).
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