Rubens missing since '45 reappears in Russia

Germany was last night demanding the return from Moscow of a priceless Rubens oil painting which vanished at the end of the second world war, possibly from the home of Joseph Goebbels, only to reappear almost 60 years later in the hands of the Russian mafia.

The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, is to press for the return of the painting when he travels to Russia next month for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

The work, Tarquin and Lucretia, was painted by Peter Paul Rubens between 1609 and 1612, and is widely acknowledged as one of the Flemish master's finest early works. "It's an extremely important painting," Werner Busch, a senior art historian at Berlin's Free University, said last night.

The huge canvas, depicting the mythological rape of the chaste Roman wife, Lucretia, disappeared from a castle on the outskirts of Berlin in 1945 as the Red Army advanced on the German capital.

This year a dubious consortium of Russian businessmen emailed a photograph of the picture anonymously to a German art expert, Gerd Bartoschek. They wanted to sell it. The painting was badly damaged and had clearly been rolled up. But it appeared to be genuine and worth, according to some estimates, as much as £50m.

"It is a good picture," Julian Radcliffe, director of the Art Loss Register in London, added. "The problem is that for everything that was taken by the Russians from Germany, there were a number of things taken from Russia by Germany, which the Russians never got back. It is true that the Russians have got more of the German stuff. The Russians have always considered this to be a bargaining chip. There have been lots of negotiations. But things have moved very slowly." The two countries are still discussing the return of thousands of works of art stolen by both armies during the war, but many Russian MPs are unwilling to give anything back.

Posted by David on September 20, 2003 12:15 PM