The Tsarina's Lost Treasure

August 1, 2020
What defines a treasure, and who controls its fate? In the case of Gerrit Dou's masterpiece, the triptych painting, The Nursery, and the ship on which it sank in the Baltic Sea in 1771 while in transit to the court of Catherine the Great, the answers to those questions have embroiled everyone from the wreck's finders and the Finnish government to Russian tycoons and international museum professionals. Eastern Europe specialist Easter and travel writer Vorhees expertly weave the story of the ship and the painting into a history spanning the Dutch art culture in which The Nursery was created, the Enlightenment world that shaped Catherine into an art collector and funneled art and culture into her court, and the location of the shipwreck site in 1999. While Finland ultimately chose to leave the Tsarina's treasure in its watery grave, the authors plumb the two decades of drama that followed its rediscovery to combine important questions about the value of art and culture and the meaning of heritage and to create an entertaining tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)