VIENNA, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- A private collection of Old Master art, second only to that of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, will go on display in Vienna for the first time in nearly 60 years.
The art will be displayed March 28 at Vienna's Liechtenstein Garden Palace, which was renovated at a cost of $30 million by reigning Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein.
The Tuesday announcement said that 250 paintings and sculpture representing the best of the Liechtenstein royal family's collection, acquired over four centuries and still being added to, will be displayed including the world-renowned "Death of Decius" cycle of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens.
The collection was removed from the Liechtenstein Palace in 1945 to keep it from falling into the hands of the advancing Red Army. It was then smuggled into Switzerland and later into the tiny Alpine principality of Liechtenstein. Only a few of the 1,500 art works that make up the collection were displayed in Vaduz, the Liechtenstein capital, in the intervening years.
American TV viewers got a preview glimpse of the Liechtenstein collection in the Public Broadcasting Corporation's annual broadcast Thursday of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert, hosted by Walter Cronkite.
