Johannes Vermeer s Girl With A Pearl Earring is one of the most admired paintings in the world, the jewel in the crown of the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague. But 80 years ago, it wasn t even the most admired Vermeer in Holland.
That distinction belonged to the recently discovered Christ At Emmaus. The public swooned before the 17th-century masterpiece, as did even eminent critics. For them, it proved Vermeer, as had long been rumoured, was directly influenced by Italy s great Caravaggio.
Christ At Emmaus was the most famous and talked-about Vermeer in the world, and following its thrilling discovery in 1937, a frantic fund-raising campaign began to keep it in the Netherlands.
How a Historian Got Close, Maybe Too Close, to a Nazi Thief
Over nearly a decade, Jonathan Petropoulos met dozens of times with a man who helped the Nazis loot Jewish art collections, a complicated relationship he explores in “Göring’s Man in Paris.”
Bruno Lohse, second from right, leads Hermann Göring, center, on a tour of seized artworks.Credit.Bruno Lohse Papers
By Nina Siegal
Jan. 17, 2021
By the late 1990s, most of the Nazi art experts who helped loot European Jews were either dead or living quiet lives under the radar. Not so Bruno Lohse, who served as the art agent to the Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, Hitler’s right-hand man.