The painting Göring traded for a fake Vermeer

Aertsen’s broad wooden panel brings a kitchen into the open air. In the Goudstikker records it belonged to the dealer’s holdings at Nyenrode Castle, where it carried inventory number 1513. In July 1940, after Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker died while fleeing the German invasion, the panel entered the chain of forced transfers that took much of his stock to Germany.

On 9 February 1944 the panel went back to the firm operated by Alois Miedl as part of the exchange for a supposed Vermeer. The coveted picture turned out to be a forgery. Aertsen’s painting subsequently passed to the Linz collecting project and was recorded by Allied personnel at the Munich Central Collecting Point after the war.

The Allies sent the painting back to the Netherlands. That repatriation did not return it to the Goudstikker family. Researchers trace it to a sale by Van Marle, de Sille and Baan in Rotterdam on 20–22 December 1950. They found no identified buyer or later ownership. Three archival numbers identify the same panel: Göring 406, Linz 3031 and Munich 11795.