As the son of a crofter family young Berend Bouters natural talent finds him in the prestigious Art Academy of Amsterdam. It is early 1900. Everything points to a successful career as an artist, he works along Mondrian, becomes part of the Barbizon movement, until life throws him a curve ball. During the First World War, Holland remains neutral, Berend becomes the owner of a barge and during heart-stopping escapades, smuggles goods to occupied Belgium for which he is richly rewarded. When the war is over, authorities confiscate all his belongings. To rebuild his fortune, he ingeniously schemes to adopt a new identity though Switzerland, he becomes Baron Fernando Del Muntanyes, the famous Antiquarian. But when he becomes involved in the greatest art heist of the century, the theft of a 15th century panel of The Adoration of the Lamb from the St.Bavo cathedral in Ghent, he is relentlessly pursued by the police. Ultimately with the Sicilian mafia and the Belgian police on his tail he spectacularly escapes on board of the Hindenburg Zeppelin to America. It seems to give him a new start, will it?

Examines the late eighteenth-century preoccupation with the acquisition of old books, and the new historical discipline created by traders.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.