Opinion ID: 3066176
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jacques Goudstikker Acquires the Cranachs

Text: For the 400 years following their creation in 1530, the panels hung in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1927, Soviet authorities sent the panels to a stateowned museum at a monastery and in 1927 transferred them to the Art Museum at the Ukrainian Academy of Science in Kiev. Soviet authorities then began to arrange to sell stateowned artworks abroad and held an auction in Berlin in 1931 as part of that effort. This auction, titled “The Stroganoff Collection,” included artworks previously owned by the Stroganoff family. The collection also included the Cranachs, though Von Saher disputes that the Stroganoffs ever owned the panels. Jacques Goudstikker, who lived in the Netherlands with his wife, Desi, and their only child, Edo, purchased the Cranachs at the 1931 auction.