MOSCOW, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Russia's culture minister Monday rebuffed German calls for his country to return a highly valued Rubens painting taken from Germany in 1945.
Mikhail Shvydkoi, responding to Germany's unconditional call for the painting to be returned, said there would be no criminal prosecution of the private Russian citizen who now holds the canvas and that the current owner of the painting deserves compensation, Novosti reported.
Painted presumably between 1609 and 1612, "Tarquin and Lucrece," one of Rubens' best works, was removed from the Potsdam museum in Germany by the Russian military at the end of World War II.
It was missing until this year when it came up in a private Russian collection. The owner says he bought it from the daughter of a Soviet military officer who took the canvas from Germany.
Shvydkoi granted that the painting came from Potsdam, but also said the Rubens is now in Russia, and has been legally purchased. And while that gives sufficient grounds for a legal controversy, the only disputable matter is who would buy the treasure, a government or a private entity.
