Van Eyck's Annunciation, sold by Stalin

A room of Flemish primitives, and a state secret

This gallery brings together masterpieces of fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Netherlandish painting: Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Petrus Christus, Memling, Michel Sittow, Juan de Flandes. Only one of these paintings has a more troubled origin than the rest: Van Eyck's Annunciation, secretly sold by the Soviet government in the very early 1930s. The others entered the museum through more ordinary routes on the European art market: most in the Mellon collection, between 1927 and 1936, and three more through the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, between 1965 and 1967.

1. Stalin sells off the Hermitage to fund industrialization

In 1928 the Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to draw up a list of its most valuable works for sale abroad. Between 1930 and 1934, more than two thousand works from the museum were quietly sold at auction or directly to private buyers, to raise the foreign currency needed for the first Soviet Five-Year Plan of industrialization — the same policy that would, in the following years, produce a devastating famine across Ukraine and several rural regions of the USSR.

American industrialist Andrew W. Mellon, alerted by the New York gallery Knoedler & Company, acquired 21 Hermitage paintings in 1931, among them Raphael's Alba Madonna and Titian's Venus with a Mirror, now displayed in other rooms of the museum devoted to Italian painting. The transactions stayed secret until 1933, when the New York Times exposed the affair to the public.

2. The Annunciation, bought for $502,899

The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck, painted around 1434-1436, was bought by Mellon in June 1930 for $502,899. The panel, probably the left wing of a triptych unseen since before 1817, was transferred from wood to canvas during an early restoration — a risky procedure rarely practiced today, which accounts for the distinctive texture visible on the painted surface.

In 1937 Mellon donated his entire collection, including the Hermitage paintings, to the American government — a gift that officially founded the National Gallery of Art. The museum where these paintings now hang exists directly because of a sale the Kremlin would have preferred to keep secret.

3. Van der Weyden and Petrus Christus, portraiture and the sacred

Rogier van der Weyden's Portrait of a Lady, painted around 1460, shows an unidentified woman in three-quarter pose against a dark blue background, with a reserved dignity that suggests noble birth. Now in the Mellon collection (accession 1937.1.44), this panel is considered by art historians to be of higher quality than a closely related version held at the National Gallery in London, which is attributed only to the painter's workshop.

Petrus Christus's Nativity, painted around 1450, shows the Holy Family beneath a trompe-l'œil archway carved with grisaille reliefs, surrounded by four angels, while a landscape stretches into the background. Bought in December 1936 by the Mellon Trust, this devotional scene sets the Nativity within a larger chain of events — the Fall and Redemption — through the reliefs that frame it.

4. Memling, a secular portrait turned into a saint

Hans Memling's Portrait of a Man with an Arrow, painted around 1470-1475, shows a young man with hazel eyes, wearing a tall brown cap, holding the feathered end of an arrow. Examination has revealed that a halo and the arrow itself were added later by a different hand, turning the secular portrait into an image of Saint Sebastian, the martyr traditionally shown pierced by arrows — an addition removed during a 1912 restoration, though its shadow remains visible up close on the panel.

5. Sittow, painter of Europe's courts

Michel Sittow's Portrait of Diego de Guevara (?), painted around 1515-1518, shows a knight of the Spanish Order of Calatrava. Born in Reval — present-day Tallinn, Estonia — and trained in the Early Netherlandish tradition, Sittow spent most of his career as a court painter, working successively for Isabella of Castile and then the Habsburgs, which explains why his work is now scattered across collections all over Europe.

6. Van der Weyden, a Saint George 14 centimetres tall

The Saint George and the Dragon, attributed to Rogier van der Weyden and dated around 1432-1435, is an oil on wood whose painted surface measures only 14.3 by 10.5 centimetres. The saint impales the dragon while Princess Cleodolinda kneels in prayer; in the background, a walled city and a castle rise above a fantastical cliff. The attribution remains cautious: the scholar John Oliver Hand considers Rogier the most likely author, without excluding a member of the workshop or a follower of Campin or Rogier.

The painting is recorded as early as 1902 in the collection of General Plaoutine in Saint Petersburg, then passed by inheritance to an English family before being sold at Sotheby’s in London on 16 March 1966 and bought by the National Gallery of Art.

7. Isabella the Catholic’s altarpiece: Sittow and Juan de Flandes

Michel Sittow’s Assumption of the Virgin, painted around 1500-1504, is a tiny oil panel measuring 21.1 by 16.2 centimetres. It belonged to an altarpiece of forty-seven small panels on the life of Christ and the Virgin, commissioned by Queen Isabella of Castile, and it ranks, with the Ascension in the National Gallery in London, among the only two securely documented works by Sittow.

Juan de Flandes’s Temptation of Christ, around 1500-1504 (21 by 15.5 centimetres), comes from the same altarpiece: Christ, seated on a block of rough stone in a dark blue robe, makes a gesture of refusal. After the queen’s death in 1504 the panels ended up with Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, whose inventories of 1516 and 1524 list them. Charles V later gave the Temptation to his wife, Isabella of Portugal, and it was then in Madrid with Philip II; sold in London at Christie’s in 1967, it entered the National Gallery of Art the same year.

How much time

Look for the acquisition dates on the labels in this room: only one painting, the Annunciation, mentions the Hermitage — spot it among the other provenances. Allow about an hour for the room's eight paintings.

Background on the room of Flemish primitives — 5 minutes.
The secret Hermitage sale — 6 minutes.
The Annunciation (Van Eyck) — 9 minutes.
Portrait of a Lady (Van der Weyden) — 6 minutes.
The Nativity (Petrus Christus) — 6 minutes.
Portrait of a Man with an Arrow (Memling) — 6 minutes.
Portrait of Diego de Guevara (?) (Sittow) — 6 minutes.
Saint George and the Dragon (Van der Weyden) — 6 minutes.
The Assumption of the Virgin (Sittow) — 6 minutes.
The Temptation of Christ (Juan de Flandes) — 5 minutes.

Sources and verification

Checked against the official notices of the National Gallery of Art (nga.gov) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.

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Continue your visit

National Gallery of Art, Washington

The only Leonardo in the Americas A hidden love note beneath the paint, and a painting cut short of its hands. The Rothko Room, born of a scandal A landmark lawsuit recovered the paintings now on view here.

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How a painting Stalin sold in secret founded an American museum