The Adriaen de Vries statute recently discovered in the garden of an Austrian listed home has been withdrawn from Christie’s July 7th sale in London because of new information that has come to light about the work’s ownership history and relation to the home.

Der Standard had a story on this a few days ago (apologies if you don’t read German) that explains the confusion surrounding the statue’s history with the house which would appear to stretch back almost 300 years.

Christie’s spokesman describes the change of heart this way:

We were recently informed of additional information, about which we were unaware, that affects the validity of the existing export license for this recently discovered work. As we take strict compliance with export regulation extremely seriously we have withdrawn the sculpture from the auction on the evening of 7 July and the application has been resubmitted.

Mit Mythen zur Ausfuhrbewilligung (Der Standard)