Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

by Liaquat Ahamed

One group who seemed to have taken Mellon’s advice on liquidation to heart was the Russians. In 1930, desperately in need of foreign exchange, the Soviet government secretly decided to put its most treasured art works up for sale to its capitalist enemies. For Mellon, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a unique collection of art at throw-away prices, and he did not let it pass. Following a series of clandestine negotiations through art dealers in Berlin, London, and New York, Mellon arranged to purchase a total of twenty pieces. Each was a cloak-and-dagger operation. The money was wired to a dealer in Berlin, who placed it in a blocked account and paid out 10 percent to the Russians. Meanwhile, the pictures were surreptitiously removed from the Hermitage, in Saint Petersburg, the surrounding paintings repositioned to disguise the disappearance. They were then handed over at a secret rendezvous and shipped to Berlin for transport to the United States. In this way, during 1930 and into the early months of 1931, the secretary of the treasury spent almost $7 million of his money buying up half of the Hermitage’s greatest paintings. Among the paintings he bought were the Madonna of the House of Alba by Raphael, the Venus with the Mirror by Titian, the Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli, and The Turk by Rembrandt as well as several works by Van Eyck, Van Dyck, and Frans Hals.