It was a distressing shock for the baron. He had barely bought a large Tiepolo in Venice in 1865 when the Venetian court, foretokening the laws against exporting art treasures that apply now in all major Western countries but the U.S. and Switzerland, ruled that he could not take it away. Baron de Schwiter, a diplomat, got an Austrian colleague to smuggle it out anyway; now, decades later, it has ended up in the U.S., the country whose eager art buying inspired most of the protectionist laws elsewhere. Last week the Boston Museum of...
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