Flying Fox

Although I have not yet had the chance to see it, the Kunsthistorisches Museum catalogue of the Art of Painting exhibition is currently on sale at the museum online shop. Below is the URL and a little more information.

Vermeer: Die Malkunst

exhibition catalog 2010, 259 pg., numerous illustr.,
paperback in German
+ 73 S. English Translations of the Essays
Order number: 24770
24,8 x 28cm

price: EUR 29,90

bookshop link: <http://ecomm.khm.at/cgi-bin/khmmuseumsshop.storefront/4b66caaf002f47b22717c1aad84206de/Product/View/24770>

The museum also proposes a number of Vermeer Art of Painting spinoffs like scarfs, shoulder bags, coffee cups, jigsaw puzzles and magnets as well as the more conventional postcards and reproductions.

One of Dalí goals was to “rescue” modern painting.  His figurative mode and obsessive extolling of the Old Masters not only incited fellow Surrealists against him in the 1930s, but also later situated him in a diametric opposition to the avant-garde’s penchant towards abstraction.

Throughout art history, artists had incessantly attempted to grasp form and to reduce it to elementary geometrical volumes. Leonardo always tended to produce eggs Ingres preferred spheres, and Cézanne cubes and cylinders. Dalí claimed that all curved surfaces of the human body have the same geometric spot in common, the one found in this cone with the rounded tip curved toward heaven or toward the earth the rhinoceros horn. After this initial discovery, Dalí surveyed his own images and realized that all of them could be deconstructed to rhinoceros horns.

Dalí also discovered what he termed “latent rhinocerisation” in the works of the Great Masters.  The Lacemaker is a rhinoceros horn (or an assemblage of horns), and the rhinoceros’ actual horn is, in fact, a Lacemaker. The painting triumphs over the living rhinoceros because it is entirely comprised of these animated, spiritualized horns, whereas the rhinoceros wields only the single diminutive horn/Lacemaker on its nose.”

Dalí explained, “Up till now, The Lacemaker has always been considered a very peaceful, very calm painting, but for me, it is possessed by the most violent aesthetic power, to which only the recently discovered antiproton can be compared.”

A copy of  The Lacemaker had hung on the wall of his father’s study and had obsessed Dalí for a number of years. In 1955, he asked permission to enter the Louvre with his paints and canvas to execute a copy of Vermeer’s miniscule masterpiecer.

It is said that the mystery telephone bidder who paid a record $33m (£20m) for a Rembrandt at Christie’s in London is Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino owner.

Vermeer enthusiasts will remember that Wynn has distinguished himself through the years as a powerful art collector and acquired the tiny Young Woman Seated at a Virginal. It has been reported that Wynn later sold it (for unknown reasons) to a New York art collector for the same price he initially paid.

The Rembrandt in question is a Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, with His Arms Akimbo, painted in 1658. One New York dealer  balked at the purchase due to lack of technical clarity  in the face. “It was definitely a gamble,” he said. Let’s remember that gambling is Wynn’s specialty.

Although Wynn remains somewhat reticent about discussing his art dealings his high public profile is assured by his enormously successful casinos and resorts in the Las Vegas including the Golden Nugget, The Mirage, Treasure Island, Bellagio and Encore where  much of which hangs. His collection includes works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse, Turner and Picasso.

A hitherto unrecorded and unpublished painting by Cesar van Everdingen,  A Girl Holding a Balance of Plums, was recently sold at Sotheby’s for a tidy sum. Artdaily.com has it that the work was “subject of considerable bidding battle this evening. It saw interest from six potential buyers who competed strongly and whose determined bids took the price to 1,161,250 GBP, which was 16 times the pre-sale estimate of 50,000-70,000 GBP.” Luckily, the painting can be inspected with the zoom feature on Sotheby’s website accompanied by valuable background information.

To modern sensibility, bred on the precept that only the blunt and the rough can possibly signal sincerity, Cesar Van Everdingen’s elegant paint handling and sometimes aloof subject matter does not always excite non-specialists. And yet, his superlative technique and enviable sense of pictorial synthesis was held in high esteem in Vermeer’s time, higher than Vermeer’s. But what does Van Everdingen have to do with Vermeer?

Critics have long pointed to Van Everdingen’s hand for the large-scale, idiosyncratic Cupid that appears in three works by Vermeer, its boldest appearance being in the Lady Standing at the Virginal (it also starred in the  Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window but was later painted out by artist himself). However, Vermeer’s interest in Van Everdingen may have gone beyond citing his Cupid as a convenient iconographical prop. Walter Liedtke, in his recent complete catalogue of Vermeer, points out a stylistic kinship between the extraordinarily economical treatment of the head of the mistress in the Frick and Van Everdingen’s classicist  Still-Life with a Bust of Venus in the Mauritshuis.

To be sure, Van Everdingen’s  A Girl Holding a Balance of Plums is a big brash  picture. At first glance it is about as unVermeer-like as you can get. Yet her outrageous hat which projects a suggestive shadow just over her eyes and her seductively parted lips may not be lost on those who know Vermeer’s  Girl with a Flute.  Dutch painters produced countless numbers of such works who, like everyone in the Netherlands, were intoxicated by exotic whares that swelled Dutch ports  (Van Everdingen’s hat is from Brazil where Vermeer’s is obviously of Oriental extraction). If one wishes to push the case beyond the literal, the challenging rendering of the hat’s geometrical design could have stirred Vermeer attention, fascinated by the curious perspective of the decorative stripes on his own oriental hat.

Since art-history detective work is neither one of my talents nor ambitions, I gladly  leave further comparison to those more qualified.

Masterpieces of the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum from antiquity to the contemporary

12 July 2009 – 31 December 2012

Due to the complete renovation of the  Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in the coming years, the most important works will be on view in the nearby Knight’s Hall of Burg Dankwarderod, including Vermeer’s Girl with a Glass of Wine. The exhibition architecture is designed to make an overview over the different art historical eras, from antiquity to contemporary art possible.

see the museum website notice (in Germans only):

http://www.museum-braunschweig.de/Pages/Deutsch/BurgDankw.html

My good friend Adelheid  kindly keeps me up-to-date on what is going on in Northern Europe. It seems that heavy-weight museums have recently developed a taste for physically reconstructing Vermeer’s paintings in order to draw museum-goers closer to his masterpieces (see the reconstruction of Vermeer’s Art of Painting entry below). As a painter, I whole-heartedly approve this kind of display since those who look at pictures rarely understand the complexeties making a meaningful, painted compositions from real life situation.

Here’s the news.

On 24th November, the so-called “experiment-room,” a life-size, 1:1 reconstruction of the scene in Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, was presented to the public at the Labortheater of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Academy students and teachers developed and realized the exact replica which will later become the central part of the extensive educational program for the upcoming The Early Vermeer exhibition in its Dresden venue.

By stepping into the reconstructed room, visitors will be able to grasp more concretely Vermeer’s painting process, the manner in which employed perspective, light and shadow, whether he used a camera obscura, and above all, the his unsurpassed sense of composition.

Not only were the objects now visible in the painting faithfully replicated, but those which Vermeer had later overpainted such as a crystal goblet and a large painting of a Cupid. Thus, with a bit of imagination one can directly experience Vermeer’s “art of omitting” which transformed a somewhat theatrical scene into a more intimate one focused on the silent act reading of a letter a love letter.

The girl’s smart yellow jacket (none have survived) was recreated according to scientific research as a diploma project by students of  theatrical costume design department. On special occasions a young female student will model as the reading-girl in the scene. Otherwise life-size figure  made specifically by the students will stand in for the live model.

for an image and a short video (German text) see:
http://www.kanal8.de/default.aspx?ID=1781&showNews=574294

Like it or not, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is in for another lengthy hike. This time, she’s back to Japan.

On 27 October, 2009, the directors of the Mauritshuis and media company Asahi Shimbun have agreed to organize a traveling exhibition of major works of art from the Mauritshuis in 2012. It is anticipated that over forty works from The Hague will be exhibited in Tokyo and subsequently in Kobe. Amongst the works included are well-known paintings, such as the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer and the late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt.

The museum will tour a selection of its rich collection during the renovation of the historic building known as the Mauritshuis. This extensive renovation requires the closure of the museum for the public. The View of Delft will remain at the Mauritshuis.

The Young Vermeer

The Hague, Mauritshuis
May 12 – Aug 22, 2010

Dresden, Old Masters Picture Gallery
Sept 3– Dec 28, 2010

Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland
end of 2010 – Feb. 2011

Although Vermeer’s art has been consecrated by numerous special exhibitions for decades, until now, no single exhibition has focused on the myriad questions of painter’s artistic formation and early works. Hence, The Young Vermeer, which will travel from The Hague to Edinburgh and lastly to Dresden, will be the first chance to view Vermeer’s formative early works in close proximity and shall no doubt will be a milestone in Vermeer studies. All three venues feature Vermeer’s Diana and her Companions, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and The Procuress. These three works have been completely restored so they can be appreciated in all their youthful intensity. The Dresden venue will also comprise their Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

An exhibition catalogue will provide visitors with in-depth investigation to this subject by distinguished experts of Dutch art.

The Dresden venue of the exhibition seems to be particularly rich. An ambitious educational project, based on recent investigations of the Dresden Vermeer Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window will include a full-scale, scientifically elaborated reconstruction of the room represented in this early masterpiece. The reconstruction will to be presented to the public next week. A website, currently under construction but already rather promising, will further explore Vermeer’s masterpiece.

Moreover, the educational project includes a 20-minute film which focused on the early Vermeer paintings and the Dresden paintings (The Procuress and Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window).  Numerous lectures during are planned as well as an anthology, comprehending short literary texts by different authors dealing with the Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

Due to its uniqueness, the Young Vermeer exhibition has already begun to stir international attention assuring widespread interest. As details come available, they will be reported on the Flying Fox.

This week in an article by Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper will reveal how a painting that supposedly was made by Hans van Meegeren, one of the most successful forgers of all time,  is now believed to have been painted in the 17th century.

The work in question, The Procuress, has been housed at the Courtauld Institute in London since 1960 when it given as a donation from Professor Geoffrey Webb, a specialist in historic architecture. Webb had no illusions concerning its authorship; he believed that it was a forgery by Van Meegeren recovered after the War in Van Meegeren’s chalet in Nice. Scientific examination at the Courtauld confirms that the picture could date from the 17th-century since the canvas is old but more significantly, there is no evidence that any modern pigment was used.

Two other versions of  The Procuress already are present in public museums. The first is owned by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which, however, lists it as a copy. Another emerged in 1949 from an English private collection and was auctioned at Christie’s before being bought by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Scholars now believed this one to be the original by Dirck van Baburen.

This bit of news may be relevant to Vermeer studies since it is well known that Vermeer included just such a procuress motif  in the background of two of his compositions, The Concert and the Lady Seated at the Virginals. Baburen’s Procuress, or a copy of the original, probably corresponds to one in the 1641 inventory of Vermeer’s mother-in-law, Maria Thins, described as “a painting wherein a procuress points to the hand.”

Digital reproduction of 317 known paintings, 285 etchings and more than 100 drawings of Rembrandt van Rijn go on display next week at the former Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Ernst van de Wetering, a leading Rembrandt scholar who supervised the project, said that the exhibition, unique in its kind, will offer viewers “a walk through Rembrandt’s mind.” All works will be reproduced in their original size and shown chronologically. He argues that the reproductions have the advantage of stripping away the aura of awe viewers often have when they see an original, which hinders their assessment of the work.

If that is not enough, some have been digitally enhanced by Van de Wetering himself, hoping to restore the color and detail they had when they left Rembrandt’s studio nearly 400 years ago.

Here, one may see Van der Wetering’s point and one may miss it entirely. Perhaps it’s a matter of assuming a realistic point of view. Without splitting hairs, the exhibit is at least (or cynically, at most) a very good and very big Rembrandt unfolded art book.

Being a painter, I am pretty well trained to look at paintings, so if aura is there, I assume it is produced by the inner workings of the painting  itself and not for other reasons. And again being a painter, the virtual restoration part leaves me puzzled. I accept age and decay as well as the aging and decaying of paintings. One may reasonably suspect Rembrandt did too.

“The Complete Rembrandt, Life Size”
the former Amsterdam Stock Eschange, Amsterdam
July 5 – Sept. 7. 2009

Following even Vermeer matters little know to the general public, Pieter Groenewegen’s Mountain Landscape with Travelers has been temporarily loaned by the Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder Gallery (Amsterdam) to the Prinsenhof-Museum, Delft.

Although you may not associate Groenewegen’s rather conventional landscapes with the sublime masterpieces of Vermeer, Vermeer evidently found Groenewegen’s Mountain Landscape with Travelers sufficiently intriguing to incorporate not once, but twice in his Lady Standing at the Virginals. To be fair, the word intriguing should be reserved to Vermeer’s pictorial sleigh of hand rather than to landscape itself. Here is the story in a pill.

Some years ago, Dr Gregor J. M. Weber (Head of the Department of Fine Arts in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) noted that the landscapes which appear on the lid of the virginal and in the gilt frame on the background wall of A Lady Standing at the Virginals showed remarkable similarities. Other than the overall composition, the succession light and dark layers of rocks and trees, the roofs of the houses and the waterfalls of two landscapes were virtually identical. Weber concluded that they were both based on the same painting.

Although many Dutch landscape painters composed their works along these lines, Weber noted a much greater similarity with the work of Pieter Groenewegen from Delft and concluded that the work must have been by him. By coincidence, Weber saw a photograph of Groenewege’s Mountain Landscape with Traveler and informed the two Amsterdam art dealers, John and Willem Jan Hoogstader, of his finding who were amazed when they discovered they were the owners of the very picture in question.

Using computer montage, Weber further analyzed the two depictions in Vermeer’s painting in reference to the real Groenewegen. And although it was evident that Vermeer had used some poetic license in adapting Groenewegen’s landscape to his expressive exigencies, the coincidences were so compelling that the swept away any reasonable doubt of Weber’s original conjecture.

What remains to be understood is the scope of Vermeer’s pictorial trickery. Personally, I have a hunch that the two landscapes were meant to deliberately “echo” each other in order to create a visual analogy to the musical theme which is at the heart of Vermeer’s composition. Visual “echos,” some obvious and some more subtle, seem to be a standard tool in Vermeer’s pictorial repertoire. One example is the curling locks of the youthful Guitar Player which closely well echo the dangling foliage of the landscape behind her. Another is the snow-white cap of the maid and the billowing clouds of the landscape behind her in the Love Letter.

If you would like to dig further into the matter, the Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder has published Weber’s findings with copious diagrams and images in the Hoosteder Journal No 7, Sept, 2000. If you contact them they may send you a free copy. Some information, without images, can be found at < http://www.hoogsteder.com/publications/journals/journal-7/discovered>.

Bets are that you don’t know Caesar van Everdingen. Vermeer did.

Art historians believe that Vermeer used a now-lost, large-scale Cupid by Caesar Van Everdingen a good 4 times as a backdrop for his own compositions. The most explicit rendition, impossible to ignore, glares out from the late Lady Standing at a Virginal (see detail left). The other three are more discreet.

In the Maid Asleep, Cupid’s foot dangles in the upper left-hand where we can see the corner of a picture with an ebony frame. If you know he is there, you can see him standing erect in Girl Interrupted in her Music although pretty much obliterated by time and restorations. And had it not been for x-ray photography, we would have never known he hung in all his glory, dominating the background wall of Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window.

Chances are Vermeer’s Cupid is the one mentioned in the inventory of his widow’s possessions in 1676.

Knowing how exacting Vermeer was in aesthetic matters, the modern viewer might wonder just what Vermeer had in mind. To our tastes Van Everdingen’s Cupid is simply too big, too confrontational, too rhetorical and too nude to have anything to do the values we prize in Vermeer’s art. Historians usually have no problem skimming over aesthetic valuations of the painting that no longer exists. Far more comfortable is to take Cupid as a symbol which 300 years ago meant, and still means, love to anyone.

In common with so many forgotten or underestimated artists, Van Everdingen occupied an important place in the art of his own time. The century-long refusal of critics and connoisseurs to look at his type of art shows signs of coming to an end.

It could not have escaped a young, ambitious painter like Vermeer that Van Everdingen was a superb technician, not only with detail and brushwork, but with his ability to paint portraits, mythological and allegorical pictures in a broad, yet crisp and polished style. His outstanding strength was his ability to simplify complicated forms and convey the sense of volume and surface with great pictorial economy. His treatment of light evokes the fullness of nature; even his shadows are colorful and pleasant to look at.

In his later years, when Vermeer pursued a more classicist agenda, Van Everdingen’s painting became more relevant than just being a convenient prop.

Luckily there are some excellent high resolution images of van Everdingen’s work on the net.

My preferences goes to:

Cupid with a Glass Ball
Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf
http://www.museumkunstpalast.de/mediabig/1845A_original.jpg

Winter
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/sk/z/sk-a-4878.z

Bacchus with Nymphs and Cupid
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
http://www.oogvoornaakt.nl/

(this images is a bit laborious to access but very worth the while)

1. click on the “Bekijk alle naakten” link to the lower-right
2. scroll the multiple images to reach the far left-hand border
3. click on the farthest left-hand painting in the second row from the top
4. click on the medium size image of the paintings that appears which brings up an extraordinarily detailed image and use your mouse to explore the painting.

what is it? – Gerrit van Honthorst, like a number of 17th-century Dutch painters, knew his trade and worked well in different genres. He was equally comfortable in history painting, raucous bordello scenes and refined portraiture alike. Although sought-after in his own age, few average museum-goers are familiar with his work even though he was far more influential in his age than Vermeer. He was also far richer. In 1654, he sold his house in The Hague for the astronomical sum of 14,000 guilders (an average Dutch house might have gone for 1,000 or less) and lent Elizebeth, Princess of Hohenzollern no less than 35,000.

what to look for – Although the present canvas may not be particularly inspiring, it is nonetheless a solid piece of 17th-century painterly skill.

The most informative detail is the painter’s “selected” palette on which are disposed two rows of perfectly ordered paints blobs. The top are all the pigments conventionally used for mixing flesh tones. The bottom row presents the ready-to-use basic mixtures. If you don’t believe flesh can be so miraculously evoked with a hand-full of different tones, scroll up and inspect the faces of the lovely painter, the putto and her sitter. Analogous flesh palettes were employed by Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The choice of representing the selected flesh palette was far from random. From the very beginning of European tradition of easel painting, the depiction of human flesh was given great importance and it still constitutes one of the most telling technical challenges until this day. Willem Beur, artist and art writer of Vermeer’s time, wrote: “Just as we humans consider ourselves the foremost amongst animals; so too, are we the foremost subject of the art of paintings, and it is in painting human flesh that its highest achievements are to be seen, whenever a painter succeeds in rendering the diversity of colors and strong hues found in human flesh and particularly in the faces, adequately depicting the intricacy of the diversity of people or their different emotions.”

For the painter and the technically-minded, the top row of pigments probably are (left to right): lead white, yellow ochre, vermillion, red ochre, red madder, raw umber, black and a last unidentified pigment.

Selected palettes were the norm in 17th-century painting when complicated compositions were worked up in a piecemeal fashion, area by area. Painters laid on their palettes only those pigments which were strictly necessary for the day’s work in order to avoid waste of grinding time and raw materials.

Vermeer’s Masterpiece,”The Milkmaid”
Sept. 10 -Nov. 29, 2009
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Just out is Carol Vogel’s NYT report of Vermeer’s Milkmaid coming to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in September, 2009.

Although no blockbuster exhibition is planned for her arrival be warned, the humble, but most majestic of all maids is sure enough to draw important crowds.  So now, in one swoop, Vermeer both serious enthusiasts and the curious can take in 6 Vermeer paintings (the MET already has 5) at one time, walk a few blocks down to the Frick and see three more.

That’s about ¼ of the Delft Master’s surviving output.

The only other loan will be a drawing by Dutch artist Jacob Backer, Woman With a Jug, from about 1645.

The Dutch Golden Age: From Rembrandt to Vermeer
October 7, 2009 – February 7, 2010
Pinacothèque de Paris

Like it or not, some important Vermeer paintings are doing pretty impressive legwork. Seeing they are all over the place, if you are planning Vermeer–related travel then please consult the Flying Fox Vermeer Tracker page to avoid being let down. Here is the latest update.

The Pinacothèque de Paris will host an exhibition will put on an outstanding Dutch works of art, an ensemble of over one hundred and thirty pieces, including about sixty paintings, thirty graphic works, ten etchings as well as ten objects to give an ample representation of carved ivories, tapestries, china, wooden miniatures, silverware, glassworks and furnishings.

Vermeer’s late little Love Letter, will be on display.

Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals
Friday and Saturday, May 15-16
Presented by the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library

United States art collections holds more than 1/3 of Vermeer’s known output (14 out of 36). How did and why did they get there?

from the Frick website:
This two-day symposium will explore the growing taste for Dutch Old Masters among collectors of the Gilded Age and beyond, such as Henry Marquand, Benjamin Altman, John G. Johnson, Henry Clay Frick, and Norton Simon. Peter Sutton, Executive Director of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, will give the keynote address.

The event is free but registration is required. For more information or to register, please call (212) 547-6894 or email centerprograms@frick.org. The symposium is made possible through the generosity of the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of The Netherlands with additional support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Writer, art historian and friend of the Flying Fox, Jonathan Lopez, wrote in recently…

Vermeer and Van Meegeren: The Real and the Faux
Jonathan Lopez, author of The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren, and Ronni Baer, William and Ann Elfers Senior Curator European Paintings

Wed, Feb 25, 7 pm
Remis Auditorium

Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren became a folk hero at the end of World War II when he confessed to selling a fake Vermeer to Hermann Goering. Author Jonathan Lopez and curator Ronni Baer discuss the extravagantly sordid life of the world’s most notorious art forger and what he did to the image of the Vermeer we know and love.

Book signing follows.

Vermeer, Fabritius & De Hooch: Three Masterpieces from Delft
Feb. 14 – May 24, 2009

Recently some noted museums are taking to small, in-focus exhibitions.

This tiny, but exceptionally focused display sets side by side three master painters of the Delft School: Carel Fabritius, Pieter de Hoogh and Johannes Vermeer.

Fabritius’s interest in illusionism is highlighted in his painting The Goldfinch, one of the fascinating pictures of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Its startling simplicity of figure against the stark white ground has often been seen as a possible starting point for Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Necklace.

The Goldfinch will be hung alongside Pieter de Hoogh’s Courtyard of a House in Delft, a far more complex work from the collection of The National Gallery, London. De Hoogh was one of the most delightfully innovative painters of genre interiors and probable source of inspiration for many of Vermeer’s own works.

Complementing these two works will be the Gallery’s own masterpiece, Vermeer’s Woman Writing a Letter with her Maid.

In 1771, the schooner Frau Maria sank near Finland while it was transporting treasures for the Hermitage Museum purchased at an auction in Amsterdam for Catherine the Great. After its rediscovery in 1991, archival research has turned up papers concerning the auction which reveal that onboard were 27 works by the Dutch painters such as Rembrandt, Hendrick Van Balen, Gerrit Terborch (perhaps Vermeer’s most talented colleague) and Jan Van Goyen.

Amazing as it may seem, experts hope the paintings were packed into special lead containers coated with wax for the overseas voyage making it theoretically possible that the canvases might survive in good shape. The Russian imperial riches are said to be the most important underwater discovery ever, presenting unprecedented historical and monetary value. Antiquarians give it the tag of 500 million to 1 billion euros. The Frau Maria will be will be raised to the surface in 2010 but the issue of ownership contended by Russia and Finland has not been settled as yet.

Russia Today