Recent Controversy
Mostaert's "Portrait of a Courtier", a painting that until 2005 had been in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 1949, was found to have been confiscated by Nazi forces in 1941 from its rightful owners in Poland. It had come from a collection of artworks amassed by Izabela Fleming née Czartoryska. The paintings were moved to Warsaw as war loomed but were inevitably seized by the Germans.
The VMFA made the decision to deaccession and transfer the work to the Polish Embassy, acting on behalf of the rightful owners' family. The family donated the painting to the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, Poland.
The small, oil-on-panel portrait is known to have had at least three different titles: "Duke of Burgundy", "Portrait of Charles VIII", and "Portrait of a Courtier". It was once paired with a portrait of a lady, thought to be Anne of Brittany, the wife of Charles VIII, King of France.
Read more about this topic: Jan Mostaert
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