Museums across Europe and the United States were poised to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death with spectacular exhibitions dedicated to the Renaissance master. Born in Urbino, and sometimes referred to as il Divino (“the Divine One”), Raffaello Sanzio died at the young age of 37. During his short lifetime, he produced gracefully elegant works that changed the course of art history. This year’s exhibitions may no longer be accessible to visitors due to COVID-19, but we are pleased to present this guest blog post focusing on the provenance of one of the great master’s missing works, Portrait of a Youth. The blog post was submitted by Julia Pacewicz, detailing her research on the work. With a degree in art history from New York University, Julia is currently studying Heritage & Memory at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, Julia worked as a cataloguer at Paddle8 and Sotheby’s.
Portrait of a Youth, also known as The Czartoryski Raphael
In May 1945, American soldiers arrived at the residence of Hans Frank in the Bavarian countryside. There they recovered a wooden chest where two Rembrandts, one da Vinci, and several other paintings lay hidden. The end of World War II marked the beginning of decades-long investigations for Nazi looted art. Prior to the start of the war,Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth, along with Rembrandt’s Landscape with a Good Samaritan and da Vinci’s Lady with Ermine, decorated the walls of Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland. But to this day, Portrait of a Youth remains missing.
My aim is to present to you a case study detailing the story of one of history’s most intriguing paintings. The provenance research below is divided into two components. The first part unearths part of the history prior to the earliest confirmed modern owner (the Czartoryski Family), with the ultimate goal of identifying the lineage of the painting as well as the sitter; the second part focuses on retracing the painting’s movements during the Second World War, with the hopes of bringing us closer to where the painting resides today.
The oil on poplar wood painting is commonly attributed to the great Italian Renaissance master, Raffaello Santi (also known as Raphael). The portrayal of the figure evokes Raphael’s Roman period, and it was most likely painted sometime between 1513 and 1516. The true beauty of the work, a half-length image of an unknown sitter, radiates from its mysterious aura. The figure is clothed in a puffed white camicia with a thick marten’s fur thrown over his (or her) left shoulder. The youth acquires a nonchalant pose, resting his right forearm on an Anatolian rug laid on a table. A black beret is caught slightly slipping down the hair. The sitter evokes a certain casualness, or sprezzatura, which – in the words of Castiglione Baldassari – “conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.”
The identity of the sitter has not been confirmed to this date. Scholars have described the youth as a young man; a woman; Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua; Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino; or Evangelista Tarasconi of Parma, also known as Parmigianino, the supposed lover of Pope Leo X. Others believe that the painting is a self-portrait. Princess Izabela Czartoryska, the founder of the Czartoryski Museum, described the painting in a 1828 catalogue of the collection as “a portrait of Raphael, painted by his own hand.” This was a prevalent theory among her contemporaries. The true identity of the youth remains a mystery, largely due to vast gaps in the provenance prior to entering the Czartoryski collection at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Part 1: Mapping the Journey from Italy to Poland
Gothic House, Puławy, Poland, circa 1850
The earliest confirmed provenance traces the painting to the collection of the Czartoryski Family, one of the most prominent princely houses of Poland. It is the mentioned in the 1828 Czartoryski CATALOGUE that locates the painting in an upstairs office of a Gothic house, a small neo-gothic building on the Czartoryski’s property in Puławy. In the catalogue entry, Izabela Czartoryska specified that the painting was purchased by Princes Adam Jerzy and Konstanty Adam Czartoryski from the Giustiniani Family of Venice. However, there are no surviving official documents that record the transaction.
A few years ago, I travelled to Kraków where I met Janusz Wałek, a renowned art historian and former curator of Italian paintings at the Czartoryski Museum. He introduced me to Pieter Jan de Vlamynck’s engraving of the Portrait of a Youth housed in the Czartoryski archives, which sheds more light on the potential provenance of the painting. Below the engraved image of youth, there is an inscription that identifies the Duke of Mantua as a previous owner and M. Reghellini de Schio as the then-current owner of the original painting. The engraving most likely refers to Marcello (Martialis) Reghellini de Schio, Italian-born historian of antiquities that lived in Brussels. The inscription is supported by a record of Raphael’s self-portrait in an 1826 catalogue listing Reghellini’s art collection that belonged to the Duke of Mantua prior to 1630.
Famed art historian Giorgio Vasari stated that Giulio Romano, one of Raphael’s closest pupils, inherited Raphael’s works after his death in 1520. Some scholars hypothesize that Romano brought the painting to Mantua in 1524. If Portrait of a Youth was indeed in Raphael’s possession until his death, it would be possible that Romano brought it with him when he began working at the court of Gonzaga. In this case, the painting would have avoided the Sack of Rome of 1527.
Image from van Dyck’s sketchbook
Between 1621 and 1627, Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck memorialized his journey through Italy in a SKETCHBOOK, in which he included a quick sketch of Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth, tracing the soft folds of the sitter’s clothing. Van Dyck began his travels in Genoa in November of 1621. He then briefly visited Rome in February 1622, and then went on to Venice, stopping in Florence and Bologna on the way. He then traveled to Mantua and reached Turin in January of 1623. Soon after, he returned to Rome, where he stayed for a few months. He then went back to Genoa and remained there until 1627, having visited Palermo in the summer of 1624. Unfortunately, it is not known where van Dyck saw Raphael’s painting. The sketch was drawn on a folio next to a portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola, which is the only drawing in the sketchbook that is inscribed (July 12, 1624, Palermo). Although the sketchbook is not sorted in a precise chronological order, we are confident that upon seeing the charming work of the Renaissance master, van Dyck could not help but retrace the enigmatic figure on the other side of the frame. The Flemish master’s drawing offers evidence that situates the painting in Italy in the seventeenth century.
The connection between the painting and the city of Mantua is highly possible considering van Dyck’s sketchbook. However, the de Vlamynck engraving in the Czartoryski Archive most likely depicts a copy of Portrait of a Youth, one that Reghellini aspired to sell to William I, the King of the Netherlands. Sources indicate that Reghellini’s painting was of subpar quality so it was not considered an original work by Raphael. Moreover, the dating of the Reghellini catalogue conflicts with the supposed date of the acquisition of the painting by the Czartoryski Family. (This deviation in the story helps us understand an important lesson in provenance research– always be cautious. For centuries, Raphael’s name has been engraved in the art historical canon and therefore it is not unusual to come across numerous copies, and even forgeries, of his work.)
Nonetheless, a handwritten note below the engraving offers more insights into the history of the Czartoryski painting. The writing dates the purchase of the original painting by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski to 1808 in Venice. The author of the handwritten note is unknown and the date is also problematic as it is highly probable that Prince Adam Jerzy purchased the painting during his travels in Italy sometime between 1798 and 1801, as he was the only family member to travel to the country at the turn of the nineteenth century.
After the third partition of Poland in 1795, Princes Adam Jerzy and Konstanty Adam were sent to the Russian Court of Tsar Paul I. Prince Konstanty Adam returned to Poland shortly after, but Prince Adam Jerzy remained in Saint Petersburg and began a political career. In 1798, Tsar Paul I sent Prince Adam Jerzy to Italy as an ambassador to a dispossessed King of Sardinia. In reality, Prince Adam Jerzy was sent into exile because of an alleged affair with the wife of the Tsar’s son. Having to part ways from his lover, Prince Adam Jerzy aimed to heal his hollow heart through admiring the Italian culture.
Prince Adam Jerzy first arrived in northern Italy, visiting only the principal buildings of Verona, Venice, and Mantua due to a strict schedule. He then traveled to Florence in the winter of 1798/1799. There, Prince Adam Jerzy visited art collections and studied the Italian language. He also visited Pisa and then moved to Rome, where he embarked on an ambitious project of recording a street map of ancient Rome (this was never completed). After Rome, Prince Adam Jerzy traveled to Naples and Florence again. He briefly visited his mother, Izabela Czartoryska in Puławy in 1801, before returning to Saint Petersburg. Prince Adam Jerzy kept a journal, indicating that he had very little time, if any at all, to acquire the painting in Venice. It is more likely that Prince Adam Jerzy purchased the painting through an intermediary acting on behalf of Venice’s Giustiniani Family, with the work most likely located in an Italian city other than Venice.
During his travels, Prince Adam Jerzy regularly corresponded with his mother, Princess Izabela Czartoryska. Their letters reveal a maternal love with which Izabela embraced Adam from afar. In return, Prince Adam Jerzy sought to find the most treasured gifts for his mother to fill the walls of her new museum. She expressed ambivalence about acquiring new works and instead asked for antiquities. Princess Izabela liked souvenirs that focused on conveying stories rather than mere objects destined solely for aesthetic pleasure. Although there are multiple sources from the Czartoryski Archives that pinpoint different acquisition times for Portrait of a Youth (as recounted above), we do not have any surviving official documentation that records the exact transaction. Based on the available information, we can deduce that the first time Raphael’s painting left its home country was through the acquisition by the Czartoryski Family.
Part 2: Following the Masterpiece’s Footsteps During Wartime
After residing in the Gothic House in Puławy, Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth traveled around Europe, escaping wars during the nineteenth century. During the November Uprising in 1830, the painting was walled-up in a basement of the Czartoryski’s palace in Sieniawa, in southeast Poland. After a few years underground, the portrait was moved to Hotêl Lambert in Paris along with Rembrandt and da Vinci’s paintings. In 1848, Portrait of a Youth was sent by Prince Adam to a London-based antiquarian in the hope of selling it. The painting remained there until 1851, when it was sent back to Paris. The painting returned to Kraków shortly after the inauguration of the Czartoryski Museum in the 1880s. In 1893, it was exhibited in the museum, on a wall left of the entrance, hanging above a neo-Renaissance chest decorated with Florentine cassoni on the sides. After the start of World War I, the painting was loaned to Gemäldegalerie in Dresden in 1915. It remained on public display there until July 1920 when it was returned again to Kraków.
In anticipation of the next war, General Marian Kukiel, the director of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, began preparing plans to secure the art collection in April 1939. On August 24, the portrait was transported by truck to the Czartoryski’s palace in Sieniawa. Portrait of a Youth was kept in a wooden chest signed LRR (meaning “Leonardo, Raphael, Rembrandt”). In Sieniawa, the LRR and other chests were hidden behind a brick wall in the basement, in the same location as in the 1830s. On September 15, German soldiers began occupying the Sieniawa palace. On September 18, 1939, they raided the basements and demolished the walls, discovering the Czartoryski’s treasures and breaking into the LLR trunk. The soldiers took precious metal and jewelry, leaving the paintings behind. After the incident, German authorities refused to acknowledge the theft and placed the blame on local delivery boys carrying eggs and butter to the palace kitchen.
On September 20, 1939 the LRR chest was sealed behind the same basement wall. Two days later, the owner of the collection, Prince Augustyn Czartoryski, moved it to his residence, the Pełkinie Palace. It was roughly ten miles south of Sieniawa. Eventually, the head of the regional Gestapo learned about the collection and demanded it for security reasons. The Gestapo also imprisoned Prince Augustyn who eventually escaped from the Nazi regime with the help of the Spanish Royal Family. On October 23, Witold Czartoryski became in charge of the collection after Augustyn fled and was forced to sign a document agreeing for Gestapo to secure the Collection. From that moment on, the Nazi government became in charge of the Czartoryski Collection.
Shortly after, the collection was moved to the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. A team of art experts examined the artworks before shipping them to Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin, where Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring saw the LRR for the first time. Two months after, Hans Posse suggested to Adolf Hitler that the LRR should be moved to the planned Adolf Hitler Museum in Linz. In December 1939, the LRR was split for the first time. Da Vinci’s Lady with Ermine was moved to Kraków to accompany Hans Frank, whereas both Rembrandt’s Landscape with a Good Samaritan and Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth remained in Berlin. During the Nüremberg Trails, Kajetan Mühlmann Austrian art historian and SS officer Kajetan Mühlmann provided an inventory of a safe in Deutsche Bank in Berlin located on Unter den Linden Strasse, which included Portrait of a Youth. Raphael’s work remained as a deposit in Deutsche Bank until July 1943 when Mühlmann personally handed the painting to Wilhelm Ernst Palézieux for the purposes of decorating Frank’s offices in Wawel Castle in Kraków. By mid-1943, the Soviet forces were moving closer to the Nazi occupied territories, and Frank began to prepare evacuation. During the first days of August 1944, the painting was transported by a train to a palace of Manfred von Richthofen in Sichów, Lower Silesia. This is the moment when the trail goes cold.
Bergfrieden Café in Neuhaus, temporary office of Hans Frank in 1945.
German authorities prided themselves in organization and were excellent record keepers. However, it is also easy to make documents vanish during times of chaos. A significant amount of information about Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth from the year 1944 onward heavily relies on oral testimony. In 1964, Dr. Eduard Kneiser, a conservator working for Frank, testified that he saw Portrait of a Youth in Richthofen Palace and that it was later seen in the residence of the von Wietersheim-Kramst Family in Muhrau (present-day Morawa). On January 25, 1945, Frank relocated to Neuhaus, Bavaria. The next documented inventory of the Neuhaus location was drafted by the Monuments, Fine Art, and Archives team in May of 1945. This inventory listed the other two paintings comprising the LRR, but it didn’t include our Raphael. It is hypothesized that before Frank relocated, he gave the painting to local authorities for safekeeping in Muhrau. Perhaps this was due to the work’s inconvenient size (28 x 23 inches; 70 x 59 cm). What we know is that the painting most likely disappeared somewhere in the Polish region of Lower Silesia. The fate of Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth remains unknown.
Since the end of the Second World War, many have tried but failed to recover the lost painting, including Stefan Zamoyski, the husband of Elżbieta Czartoryska; the director of the National Museum in Warsaw Dr. Stanisław Lorent; the FBI; as well as Polish, English, and German authorities. Over the years, information gets lost. Hans Frank was tried and executed in Nuremberg in 1946. Kajetan Mühlmann passed away from cancer in 1958. Wilhelm Ernst Palézieux died in a car crash in 1953, only weeks before an appointed meeting with Zamoyski concerning the investigations. Raphael’s portrait remains missing to this day.
The Simpsons, “Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in ‘The Curse of the Flying Fish’”, Season 7 episode 22, dir. Jeffrey Lynch (1996)
During World War II, Poland suffered from extensive plunder and confiscation of heritage; ever since, the government and the public have made extensive efforts to recover and repatriate their cultural property. Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth has become strongly embedded within official heritage narratives in Poland and the lost artwork is at the forefront of the national campaign for art restitution. After the fall of communism in Poland, Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski as the rightful heir reclaimed the rights to a portion of the Czartoryski Collection. In 1991, he established the Princes Czartoryski Foundation, which took care of the recovered artworks, including Rembrandt’s Landscape with a Good Samaritan and da Vinci’s Lady with Ermine. In 2016, the Polish government acquired the Czartoryski Collection, including property rights to the missing painting. Today, the painting lives on in a DIGITAL DATABASE of wartime losses in Poland. It is important to be vocal about lost cultural heritage and not stop looking for it. As Raphael’s Portrait of a Youth lives through its many reproductions, may its ghost haunt bad faith purchasers or others knowingly concealing its hidden location.
Our founder, Leila A. Amineddoleh, was recently quoted by The Art Newspaper in an article about the application of the First Amendment to video games. A New York judge ruled that the popular video game Call of Duty falls under the category of “art” for purposes of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression. The case may have lasting repercussions in the field of intellectual property. In particular, this decision could help video game designers gain legal recognition and protection for their work. As Leila stated, “When a ruling is handed down it becomes precedent, so this may encourage other video game creators and artists to more aggressively protect their rights because it shows a willingness by the court to recognize this medium as art.”
While this decision may come as a surprise to some, “art” is a broad term that encompasses more than paintings and sculptures. Courts have struggled with defining “art” for over a century. During the 19th century, some courts used a hierarchy for art which ranged from sculptural and painted works down to ornamental and utilitarian objects. Courts no longer categorize and describe creative works in this way. However, it is a challenge for courts to determine whether something is “art” (and thus protected under the First Amendment) because creative expressions are continuously evolving. Most types of creative expression can be considered art, including non-traditional forms like tattoos and graffiti.
Courts recognize that the First Amendment protects more that political speech and verbal expressions; it is an important tool for the development and protection of art, which has the power to transcend language and is constantly evolving. Visual works range widely in their ideas, concepts, and emotions. Creators, and art market participants, now push the boundaries of what was previously classified as art. Video games fall under this category. They were even the subject of an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and they draw law sums of money as collectors’ items in the marketplace. As noted by The Art Newspaper, game collectors spent more than $100,000 on a “rare Super Mario Bros. game.”
Here at Amineddoleh & Associates LLC, we are proud to represent all members of the creative community, from traditional artists such as painters and sculptors to others including dancers, performance artists, lighting designers, comic book collectors, magicians, and more. We understand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to art, and we work closely with our clients to determine how best to serve their individual needs. Our successful collaboration with creative individuals and entities is testament to our knowledge and expertise in the fields of art and intellectual property law.
Discussions about provenance often arise in the context of thefts committed during WWII, as well as mysterious losses of artworks and cultural objects during that time. This is not surprising, due to the fact that the Nazi Party looted a fifth of all art in Europe. Works not stolen were sometimes hidden in order to protect them from plunder. It has taken decades to restitute stolen objects, and there are many works still missing from rightful owners.
One of the first cases involving Nazi loot was Menzel v. List, 298 N.Y.S. 2d 979 (1969). Erna Menzel sued the Lists, good faith purchasers, for the return of a Chagall painting, Le Paysan à L’échelle, stolen from her vacated apartment in Brussels. The Menzels had fled their home in 1941 when the Nazis entered Belgium and plundered cultural property across the country. Amongst other allegations, the Lists argued that the Menzels had abandoned their property and asserted that they bought the work in good faith. The court ruled that the painting was not abandoned, and thus, the Nazi Party never gained title to the work. Ultimately though, the court had to make a determination between “two innocent parties,” and decided in favor of the original owner, Menzel. Despite the work’s return to Menzel, not all hope was lost for the good faith purchasers. The Lists recovered damages from the gallery that sold the work to them, the Perls Gallery. (The well-known gallery acquired the work in Paris in 1955, but its whereabouts between 1941 and 1955 is still unknown, demonstrating the importance of conducting thorough due diligence prior to an acquisition.)
During the decades following WWII, a number of disputes concerning Nazi loot came before US and international courts and committees, but a major resurgence of cases began decades later. In the 1990s, the international community began reexamining Nazi plunder in detail. The reunification of Germany and influx of information from the states formerly part of the Soviet Union resulted in the release of records about loot, and it sparked an increased global awareness about issues related to war-era thefts. During the same decade, non-binding legal instruments, like the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art were drafted.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
One of the most famous disputes over Nazi loot was Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004). The issue before the Supreme Court dealt with a very narrow exception for immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, but the underlying facts of the case involve a number of paintings that share a similar sad history.
The litigation was filed by Maria Altmann, the niece of prominent Jewish manufacturers and art collectors, Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer. Their art collection included several works by Gustav Klimt, a prolific member of the Vienna Secession and a dear friend of the family. Adele died in 1925, and her will directed her surviving husband to donate six Klimt works to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death. During the probate of Adele’s will, it was determined that the works belonged to Ferdinand. The year after his wife’s passing, Ferdinand stated his intention to gift the works in accordance with his wife’s wishes, but he never did. In 1938, when the Nazis annexed Austria, Ferdinand fled Vienna, and the Nazis seized all of his property, including his art collection.
Following the war, Ferdinand attempted to recover his artwork, but he passed away in Switzerland in 1945. He left behind a short will in which none of his artwork was bequeathed to the Austrian gallery. On May 15, 1946 Austria enacted the “Annulment Law” (Federal Law Gazette 106/1946), a law that declared “null and void” all transactions and other legal actions carried out by the German Reich in the course of the financial or political penetration of Austria that resulted in the confiscation of property without fair compensation.
In 1947, Maria Altmann was named as an heir to Ferdinand’s estate. Along with the other heirs, she sought to reclaim Ferdinand’s property. The attorney for the heirs attempted to recover three Klimt paintings from the Austrian State Gallery, but the gallery claimed that the works were bequeathed to it by Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1926 and that Ferdinand only had permission to possess the works during his lifetime. The Austrian lawyer mistakenly believed that Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer’s intention to donate the paintings was binding, and thus, the works ended up being erroneously donated to the museum.
In 1998, after the seizure of two works on loan from Austria to the Museum of Modern Art in New York (see United States v. Portrait of Wally, 663 F. Supp. 2d 232 (S.D.N.Y. 2009), the Austrian National Gallery opened its archives to researchers. In 1999, journalist Hubertus Czernin contacted Maria Altmann with information proving that neither Ferdinand nor Adele had donated the works to the Austrian State Gallery. In the meantime, Austria passed a restitution law intended to return works donated under duress. A committee was formed and recommended the return of hundreds of works. However, it voted against returning the Klimt paintings. Altmann protested and requested arbitration, which was rejected. She then commenced litigation.
The Austrian government filed a motion to dismiss, asserting lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The district court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals and US Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s decision. The Supreme Court ruled that Altmann had the right to proceed with the litigation in the United States. Ultimately, the parties agreed to a binding arbitration in Austria. In 2006, the panel ruled in Altmann’s favor for 5 of the 6 works. Four of the works were sold at auction that year, and the fifth was purchased by Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie in NY. Lauder purchased the work for $135 million, then the highest price paid for a painting.
Provenance is central to nearly all matters related to stolen art. For instance, a detailed provenance of an illuminated manuscript looted during conflict was essential in the eventual settlement of a $105-million-dollar lawsuit, Western Prelacy of the American Apostolic Church of America v. J. Paul Getty Museum, No. BC438824 (Cal. Super. Ct. Oct. 19, 2012), against the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. The Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America filed a suit in 2010 alleging that the museum purchased eight illustrated pages that were once part of a 750-year-old Bible. The manuscripts were known collectively as the Zeyt’un Gospels Canon Tables, but they had been stolen during the Armenian Genocide sometime between 1915-1923.
The Canon Tables, part of the Zeyt’un Gospels, were created in 1256 by T’oros Roslin, a revered High Middle Ages illuminator. It is one of only seven known preserved manuscripts bearing Roslin’s signature, and it is the earliest of his signed works. Through the centuries, the Zeyt’un Gospels were regarded as a cultural treasure, believed to wield powers that would shield and guard everyone associated with them. During the Armenian Genocide, the church hierarchy paraded the Zeytun Gospels through every street in Zeytun to create a divine firewall of protection around the city. The remaining part of the Zet’un Gospels were in Yerevan, Armenia, while the Canon Tables surreptitiously journeyed to the United States.
Page from the Canon Tables, Zeyt’un Gospels
The prelacy demanded return of the manuscripts from the Getty Museum, but they needed to establish their ownership rights first. Provenance research revealed that in the late nineteenth century, the Zeyt’un Gospels were in the joint possession of the Sourenian Family and the Church of the Holy Mother of God. The manuscript made its way to Marash (modern day Kahramanmaraş) in 1915 where Turkish authorities deported Prince Asadur Agha Sourenian, then in possession of the manuscript. In 1916, Dr. H. Der Ghazarian, a family friend of the Sourenians, borrowed the manuscript when the family was exiled to Syria. Four years later, in 1920, the doctor and his sister fled Marash, but they were forced to leave the manuscript behind. It was found by a Turk who took the rare item to Melkon Atamian for the purpose of selling it. Before refusing to handle the sale and returning the manuscript, Atamian cut away and removed the eight Canon Table folios illuminated by Roslin. Between the late 1960s and early 1980s, the manuscript (without the Canon Tables) changed hands several times, until it came to rest at the Mesrob Mashtots Matenadaran in Yerevan, Armenia, where it remains today. Contemporaneously, the illuminated Canon Tables removed from the manuscript were in the United States. Gil Atamian, the heir of Melkon Atamian, claimed to have inherited them upon his uncle’s death in 1980. He anonymously exhibited the works in 1994 at the Walters Gallery and the Pierpont Morgan Library in a show entitled “Treasures from Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts.” That same year, the Getty Museum purchased the Canon Tables from Atamian.
Due to the Church’s ability to trace the passage of the pages, it demanded restitution and confirmed that the missing pages were the same as those in possession of the Getty Museum. As a result, a settlement was reached in September 2015, with the agreement acknowledged the Church’s rightful ownership of the Canon Tables. The Church then donated the illuminated pages to the Getty Museum in order to guarantee their preservation and exhibition. (For more information about the Zeyt’un Gospels, Guggenheim Fellowship winner Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh’s The Missing Pages was released just last year.)
Although much of the focus of looting during WWII focuses on the wide-scale looting committed by the Nazis, Germany also suffered extensive losses of its own cultural heritage items. For example, it is estimated that the Soviet armed forces stole and transported more than 2.5 million objects from Germany to the USSR, and these items were held in secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The items became known as “trophy art” within Russia. American servicemen also stole valuable property throughout Europe during WWII.
One well-known restitution was for property stolen from the Church of St. Servatii in Quedlinburg, Germany (see United States v. Meador, No. 4:96-cr-00001 (E.D. Tex. Oct. 22, 1996), aff’d, 138 F.3d 986 (5th Cir. 1998)). An American Army Officer, Joe T. Meador, stole a number of rare and valuable treasures and shipped them home to Texas. The stash comprised of 12 medieval religious treasures, including a 16th century manuscript with a jewel-encrusted cover.
Church of St. Servatii, Quedlinburg, Germany
Apart from their physical beauty, the Quedlinburg Treasures have great historical importance to Germany. Quedlinburg has a rich history dating back to at least the 10th century when it was ruled by Heinrich I, a 10th-century Saxon ruler who united an early configuration of German-speaking states (Heinrich is generally acknowledged as the founder of the medieval German state). The town’s treasure, containing extraordinary examples of medieval high craftsmanship, was located in the Schatzkammer (treasure chamber) of Quedlinburg’s cathedral for a thousand years. Saxon Queen Mathilde began building the town’s cathedral, St. Servatii, after the death of her husband Heinrich I in 926. The Quedlinburg Treasure was gathered at the church during the queen’s life. Subsequently, it became so large that it filled an entire treasure chamber. A millennium later, after Allied air-strikes on Germany began, the treasures were moved to a cave outside of the town for protection.
The treasures were hidden by church officials during the war, but the hoard was discovered by American forces, and then it went missing from Quedlinburg during the final weeks of WWII. The church reported the objects as missing, and the US Army even investigated the theft, but officials were unable to locate the missing pieces. Eventually, the United States abandoned its efforts when Quedlinburg became part of East Germany, and the objects were finally discovered decades later.
Unbeknownst to the church, Meador had found these items and absconded with them. An unofficial history of the 87th Armored Field Artillery Battalion states that Lieutenant Meador was assigned to Headquarters Battery, one of three units that organized teams to search the town for weapons, radio transmitters and other contraband. The unit’s history states that ”an intoxicated soldier,” discovered a “cave on the outskirts of the city” filled with ”valuables, art treasures, precious gems and records of all sorts.” Guarding this ”Nazi loot,” the history states, became an ”important” task for the 87th Battalion.
Meador evidently did not guard the property well, but rather took the opportunity to commit a crime. He mailed the precious objects to his family in Texas, with instructions that they not open the package. In references to the boxes he sent home, Meador wrote to his parents, “One is a box that contains a book, the cover of the book has a statue of Christ on it. By all means, if it gets home take extra good care of it. I have an idea that the cover is pure gold and the jewels on the cover are emeralds, jade and pearls. Don’t ask me where I got it! But it could possibly be very very [sic] valuable.” While still in Germany, he later lamented, “Now that the war is over it is harder to get things.” After his return from the war, Meador kept the treasures in a safe deposit box for decades.
Upon Meador’s death in 1980, the objects passed to his brother and sister, who then began selling the works. However, the lack of provenance led to problems. Reputable sellers would not deal with the objects, as experts realized that the works were the missing property from Quedlinburg. It consequently became impossible for Meador’s heirs to sell the property on the open market. Furthermore, due to the attempts to sell the works privately, the identities of Meador’s heirs were discovered, and several lawsuits were filed for the restitution of those objects. The parties reached an out-of-court settlement in 1992, and the heirs returned all the works in exchange for $2.75 million. Before the objects were returned to Germany, they were exhibited in the Dallas Museum of Art.
Another case involving property taken from Germany was the ownership dispute between a German museum and an American collector. (Kunstsammlungen Zu Weimar v. Elicofon, 678 F. 2d 1150 (2d Cir. 1982). The case was particularly complex because the works belonged to Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar (KZW), a museum located in East Germany, a country not recognized by the United States. After East Germany was finally recognized, New York federal courts ruled that KZW is the rightful owner of the works.
Portraits of Hans and Felicitas Tucher
As during many conflicts, important cultural items are stored for safekeeping. During WWII, KZW kept a number of works in a castle. In 1945, thirteen works were stolen from the castle, including two portraits by Albrecht Dürer. After the war, an American serviceman returned home and sold the Dürer works to a NY art collector. Purportedly unaware of their stolen nature, Elicofon bought the works for $450 and displayed them in his home. He discovered the paintings’ attribution from a friend who had seen them in a book about artworks stolen from Germany during WWII. Afterwards, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Grand Duchess of Saxony-Weimar, and KZW demanded the return of the paintings. Elicofon refused. The lawsuit involved complex questions of international law due to the fact that the United States did not recognize East Germany at the time of the lawsuit’s filing in 1969. The case took over a decade to litigate, but it was finally resolved in 1981 when the Eastern District of New York granted a summary judgment motion in favor of KZW and compelled Elicofon to transfer ownership and possession of the works to the museum.
The two works, painted by Dürer in 1499, originally comprised a diptych. The portraits are of Hans Tucher and his wife Felicitas, members of a prominent Nuremberg family. The couple is shown in lavish clothing. The husband wears a ring on his thumb, in addition to another ring evidencing his marriage to Felicitas in 1482. His wife holds a carnation with a bud and a flower. Her waistcoat is held by a buckle engraved with his husband’s initials. The inscription in the top right of the portrait reads “FELITZ. HANS. TUCHERIN, 33 JOR. ALT. SALUS.” In 1824, the two portraits were included in the inventory of the museum in the Jägerhaus of Weimar. Until 1927, the works were part of the private art collection of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. In 1927, title to the Grand Duke’s art collection was transferred to the government of the Land of Thuringia. Until 1943, the Dürer paintings were on exhibition in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, the predecessor museum to KZW. But in 1943, officials of the museums feared that the museum might be bombed, so the works were moved to a storeroom in the castle at Schwarzburg. In June 1945, a United States Army regiment was stationed at Schwarzburg Castle. The disappearance of the paintings coincided with the departure of the American troops in July 1945. Subsequent to Elicofon’s return, a number of other looted artworks were returned to the KZW, including works by Jacopo de’ Barbari and Johann Tischbein.
Amineddoleh & Associates is currently working with a client to restitute an important cultural object that was removed from Germany during WWII, and the firm has previously assisted other parties with similar matters.
