Albrecht Dürer at the Albertina

If you can get yourself to Vienna by the end of November, the Albertina is hosting a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of Dürer paintings and drawings.

The NY Times ran an article on the show a few days back, which happened to discuss some of the masterpieces now on loan to the Albertina which the Albertina once owned:

The malefactor in the 19th-century theft was a certain François Lefébvre, a Frenchman who was the curator of the Albertina early in the 19th century. The facts are a bit vague because the thefts, or illegal sales of dozens if not hundreds of Dürer works, were discovered only after Lefébvre and Archduke Albert were dead, when inventories showed a drastic reduction in the Albertina's collection. Walter Koschatzky writes in his history of the Dürer drawings in the Albertina that the thefts probably occurred between 1809 and 1814, when Lefébvre, who collaborated with Napoleon, the conqueror of Austria, probably took advantage of the chaos of the Napoleonic wars to accomplish his crimes.

About 100 Dürers, for example, ended up in the collection of Antoine François Comte Andreossi, whom Napoleon appointed commandant of Vienna after the Austrian defeat in 1809. He probably got his collection from Lefébvre, Mr. Koschatzky concludes. Many Düworks also made their way into the collection of the Viennese art dealer Joseph von Grönling, who sold 41 of them to the German city of Bremen, among them "Self-Portrait as a Melancholic."

We've touched on the Napoleonic looting of European and Egyptian artworks before. Most of the loot remains in France -- the Europeans, at least, feel too much time has passed to make any claims.

NOTE: I don't know where Richard Bernstein came up with this:

Among Dürer's contributions to art history are the first self-portraits, the first still lifes with animals, the first nature landscapes, the first female nudes, the first half-length figures and the first Bible stories depicted as events in his own time.

As far as I can tell, every one of those claims is false.

Posted by David on September 27, 2003 3:58 PM