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| Rembrandt Minerva in her Study 1631 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie Berlin |
Rembrandt's sumptuous Minerva in her Study was owned from a very early date by the hereditary Princes of Orange. William of Orange took Minerva along with him to England when he became that county's king in 1689. When he died in 1702, Minerva was bequeathed in his will to the King of Prussia. The first two centuries of the picture's life were thus passed in relative privacy, on the walls of various palace apartments. In the 1830s when the Prussian state opened a public art museum in Berlin, the painting was in the core-group of royal pictures that went on open view there for the first time in their history. Minerva in her Study was mistakenly but officially attributed to Jan Lievens or Ferdinand Bol until the 1880s, when Rembrandt's name became reattached. The panel was allowed only a little more than a century of peace for hanging on a brocaded wall in a public room at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, when the Second World War sent her on a new round of travels and perils. German museum officials decided to bury the most important museum pictures in a salt mine to prevent destruction by American bombs. The conquering Americans naturally then became the ones who opened the salt mine, and this meant that they systematically shipped the masterpieces to America. Minerva along with other paintings owned by the German state went on a propaganda tour (or Roman Triumph) starting at the National Gallery in Washington DC and then wending her way through the municipal museums of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. As the 1940s turned into the 1950s, these former Gemäldegalerie paintings were finally sent home (but none to East Germany). This was not, however, a return to anything like the stability that prevailed on gallery walls during the 19th century, much less the unbroken peace at Sans Souci Palace during the 18th. Minerva has traveled recently both to Amsterdam and to Tokyo for purposes of temporary exhibition. And as has been noted here before (with persistent futility), the art public in general deludes itself into supposing that the shipping of old paintings is value-neutral. Works never travel without damage and loss. Their welfare is sacrificed to public relations.
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| Edwin Landseer Scene from Midsummer Night's Dream - Titania and Bottom ca. 1848-51 oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne |
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| Maerten de Vos Abduction of Europa ca. 1590 oil on panel Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao |
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| Frederic Leighton Perseus and Andromeda 1891 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Angelica Kauffmann Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus 1774 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Frederic Leighton Cymon and Iphigenia 1884 oil on canvas Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
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| Peter Paul Rubens Prometheus Bound ca. 1611-18 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Jean-Jacque-François Le Barbier Cupid in a Tree ca. 1795-1805 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Bartolomeo Guidobono The Sorceress ca. 1685-95 oil on canvas Cantor Center, Stanford University |
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| Annibale Carracci Pan ca. 1592 oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
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| Caravaggio Cupid as Victor ca. 1601 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Cornelis van Haarlem Fall of Ixion 1588 oil on canvas Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| Bartholomeus Spranger Hercules, Dejanira, and Nessus ca. 1580-82 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Anthony van Dyck and Jan Roos Vertumnus and Pomona ca. 1625 oil on canvas Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa |