# The Objects Whose Price Was Set by a Tax Bill and Not a Buyer > The Louvre did not buy the most famous Vermeer in France. It accepted it against a death duty, and the acquisition price is not withheld, it does not exist. Four transfers here, four numbers that are not market prices. > The Study - 2026-09-26 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-price-a-death-duty-produced/ ## Key points - The Louvre's own record for Vermeer's The Astronomer gives the owner as Etat, the acquisition mode as dation and the year as 1982 to 1983. There is no acquisition price, and there never was one: a dation discharges a tax liability in kind, so no cash moves and no price is established. - The Victoria and Albert Museum prints the mechanism in its credit line: accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax payable on the estate of the 10th Duke of Devonshire and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Duke died in 1950 and the transfer became final in 1957. - Where a number does get published it usually has a subsidy inside it. The National Gallery's 22 million pounds for the Madonna of the Pinks in March 2004 includes a douceur, the tax relief that makes a private treaty sale to a domestic museum worth a seller's while. - HMRC's own guidance sets the arithmetic out plainly. The tax satisfied is a special price, found by agreeing a value for the item and then deducting a proportion of the tax given up on it, under the arrangement known as the douceur. - An export bar can do the same work as a tax. The Prado paid 7 million euros in October 2010 for a Bruegel that press accounts valued at up to 100 million on the open market, after Spain declared it a bien de interes cultural so that permanent export could not be authorised. - The counter-case is a death duty that went the other way. Leonardo's Codex Leicester was sold at Christie's in December 1980 for the Trustees of the Holkham Estate, reportedly to meet inheritance tax, and fourteen years later it made a premium-inclusive 30,802,500 dollars in New York. ## Some of the best objects in this archive have no price and never will ## The Louvre did not buy the most famous Vermeer in France ## The V and A prints the mechanism in the credit line ## HMRC publishes the arithmetic, and the arithmetic has a name ## Twenty-two million pounds is a price with a subsidy inside it ## Spain reached the same result through an export prohibition ## The same pressure can produce a world record instead ## Objects to which none of these mechanisms has ever applied ## How to read an acquisition line ## The public cost is real and it is never published ## Why this archive is free to read A price is a measurement of agreement between two parties who could each have refused. Take that away and the number left behind is measuring something else: a tax rate, an export policy, a national appetite. Both of the great Louvre and V and A cases here are better outcomes than the alternative, and both are invisible in the one field a reader actually looks at. The Louvre's record does the honest thing in a single word, and the word is dation. ## Questions **What is a dation en paiement?** It is the French mechanism by which an heir liable to transfer duties may discharge the liability by handing over a work of art at an agreed value instead of paying money. The state receives the object and the family receives a credit against the tax bill, so no cash changes hands and no market price is established. Vermeer's The Astronomer entered the Louvre this way in 1982 to 1983. **What is Acceptance in Lieu?** It is the United Kingdom scheme under sections 230 and 231 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 by which HMRC, with the agreement of the responsible ministers, accepts heritage property in whole or part satisfaction of an inheritance tax, capital transfer tax or estate duty debt and any interest on it. The object is then allocated to a public institution, as the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries were to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1957. **What is the douceur?** It is the arrangement by which the tax satisfied is calculated as a special price: an agreed value for the item, less a proportion of the tax given up on it. In a private treaty sale to a domestic museum the same relief is what makes the sale worth a seller's while, and it is why the National Gallery's 22 million pounds for the Madonna of the Pinks is not a market price. **Why does the Louvre not publish what it paid for The Astronomer?** Because it did not pay anything. The acquisition mode on the museum's own record is dation, which means the painting was accepted against a tax liability rather than bought, so the only figure in the transaction is the valuation agreed for tax purposes. Any sum quoted as a purchase price for it is either that valuation or an invention. **Does an export bar reduce what an object sells for?** It can reduce the pool of buyers to one, which has the same effect. The Prado paid 7 million euros for Bruegel's The Wine of Saint Martin's Day after Spain designated it a bien de interes cultural, under which permanent export cannot be authorised, against press valuations of up to 100 million euros on the open international market. ## Sources - [1] Musee du Louvre, collections database, entry for L'Astronome, Johannes Vermeer, RF 1983 28, permalink ark:/53355/cl010064324. Read 26 September 2026. Primary source for the inventory number, the date of 1668, oil on canvas at 0.51 by 0.45 m, the owner given as Etat, the acquisition mode given as dation, the acquisition year of 1982 to 1983, and the display location in Richelieu, room 837. - [2] Victoria and Albert Museum, online collections catalogue, The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (Boar and Bear Hunt), museum number T.204-1957. Read 26 September 2026. Primary source for the verbatim credit line accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax payable on the estate of the 10th Duke of Devonshire and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, for the date of 1425 to 1430, the probable Arras origin, the wool warp and weft, the top edge width of 1023 cm, the estimated weight of 50 kg and the gallery location. - [3] The National Gallery, London, collection entry for Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks (La Madonna dei Garofani), NG6596. Read 26 September 2026. Primary source for the inventory number, the date of about 1506 to 1507, oil on yew at 27.9 by 22.4 cm, and the acquisition credit naming the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund with a contribution from the Wolfson Foundation, the American Friends of the National Gallery London, the George Beaumont Group, Sir Christopher Ondaatje and a public appeal, 2004. - [4] HM Revenue and Customs, Inheritance Tax Manual, section 20, national heritage property, on GOV.UK. Read 26 September 2026. Primary source for the wording that the Board may, with the agreement of the departmental Ministers with responsibility for the environment and arts, accept property in whole or part satisfaction of a CTT or an IHT debt, that property may also be accepted in satisfaction of interest accrued on CTT, IHT or ED as well as in lieu of the tax itself, for the two valuation bases available since 1987, and for the heritage qualification under sections 30 to 35 and 78 to 79 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984. - [5] HM Revenue and Customs, Inheritance Tax Manual IHTM30185, payment methods: payment by transfer of land or chattels, on GOV.UK. Read 26 September 2026. Primary source for the statutory basis in IHTA84 sections 230 and 231 and for the statement that a credit will be made to the accounting record for the case equivalent to the special price agreed for the property.