The wreck of the Vrouw Maria

When the connoisseur Gerrit Braancamp died in 1771, the auction of his collection was one of Amsterdam’s events of the year. Some twenty thousand people saw it; two thousand copies of the catalogue were sold.

The two most valuable paintings – a triptych by Gerard Dou known as ‘The Nursery’ and ‘Large Drove of Oxen’ by Paulus Potter – were bought by agents on behalf of Catherine the Great, along with ten other masterpieces. Dou’s triptych, in particular, was considered one of the greatest works of the Dutch Golden Age, on a par with Rembrandt’s ‘Nightwatch’.

Catherine would never see it, however. The works were loaded on to the Vrouw Maria, which sailed for St Petersburg on 5 September. The bulk of the cargo was sugar, but there was much else besides: madder and brazilwood, herring and cheese, clay pipes and silver.

But the ship foundered in a storm in the Finnish archipelago. The crew survived; they spent six days frantically salvaging what cargo they could. Then on 9 October the Vrouw Maria sank with its art treasures still packed tight in its upper hold. They were still there when the wreck was discovered in June 1999 in forty-odd metres of water. The ship is almost perfectly preserved. Its art? Perhaps it is better not to know.

This piece first appeared in the October 2024 issue of History Today.