Many art thefts are indeed crimes of opportunity, including instances of inside jobs. Objects sometimes disappear from storage and then reappear on the market months, or even years, later. Some employees take advantage of internal museum procedures, such as removing a work for photography or cleaning, to waylay an artwork and use it for their own ends. As recounted in Part V of this series, one of the most notorious inside thefts known to the public concerns none other than the Mona Lisa, the most valuable and recognized painting in the world.
Copyright Guggenheim Foundation
In 1990, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York sued Jules Lubell for the return of a Marc Chagall painting that had been purchased by the collector and her husband in 1967 and worth approximately $200,000. The Lubells had purchased Menageries from a reputable dealer, the Robert Elkon Gallery. The invoice and receipt stated that the artwork had been “formerly in the collection of George A. Frankiel, Paris.” As it was later revealed, Mr. Frankiel did not have a Parisian collection, rather he was a mailroom employee at the Manhattan museum. The painting’s provenance stated that Mr. Frankiel had sold the painting to another Manhattan art dealer, Gertrude Stein, before Mr. Elkon had sold it to the Lubells.
The museum had initially been unaware that the work was stolen. Once the institution discovered its disappearance, it formally deaccessioned the painting from its collection after a comprehensive inventory. However, the museum failed to take any actions to recover the work, such as publicizing the theft, hiring of a private investigator, filing of an insurance claim, or initiating a search beyond its premises. The museum justified its lack of action due to its belief that it would hinder the work’s recovery and potentially drive it deeper underground on the black market. The museum only became aware of the its location in 1985 when a dealer, acting on behalf of Mrs. Lubell, presented an image of the work to Sotheby’s for an auction estimate. A former Guggenheim employee, the Sotheby’s specialist recognized the work and notified the Guggenheim about its missing property. The museum demanded that Mrs. Lubell return the Chagall work to the museum, but she refused. In September 1987, the Guggenheim filed a lawsuit. The parties spent years litigating over procedural issues, such as the defenses of statute of limitations and laches. Ultimately, the parties settled out of court in December 1993, one day after the trial had already begun. Although the terms of the agreement are confidential, it is believed that Mrs. Lubell and the art dealers paid the museum the fair market value of the work to compensate it for the loss.
Policemen leave the Residenzschloss Royal Palace that houses the historic Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) in Dresden, November 27, 2019. (Photo by Robert Michael / dpa / AFP) / Germany OUT (Photo by ROBERT MICHAEL/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)
One of last year’s biggest thefts was likely also committed by individuals with an inside connection to a museum. Dresden’s Green Vault suffered a terrible loss in November when burglars stole eleven irreplaceable and culturally significant pieces of Baroque jewelry from the collection. Criminals sprayed fire extinguishers to cover their tracks after starting a fire at an electrical box that plunged the museum into darkness and deactivated the alarm system. That allowed them to break through the museum’s iron gate and shatter a small window to gain access to the historic Green Vault. Thereafter, they axed the glass vitrines that displayed some of the museum’s exceptional items. Founded by Augustus the Strong (we featured his Persian carpets in another post), an 18th-century prince-elector of Saxony and King of Poland, the Green Vault has one of the greatest collections of Baroque treasures. The stolen objects are estimated to be worth about $1 billion. Sadly, some of the precious jewels have popped up for sale on the dark web, offered for millions of dollars apiece. As the investigation progresses, it appears that the theft was an inside job, with some of the security guards currently under investigation.
In 2014, an anonymous source informed the Turkish cultural minister about an organized crime syndicate that used an insider to steal works from the State Art and Sculpture Museum in Ankara, Turkey. According to an anonymous source, the gang earned a whopping $250 million from their thefts. They purportedly stole artworks and antiquities from the museum between 2005 and 2009, some of which were replaced by fakes or other objects of dubious authenticity. In other cases, the items were simply removed from the museum’s storage facilities. Notably, the museum had received criticism for its inadequate inventory system prior to the crimes. That same year, it was announced that another museum had difficulties with inventorying of its collection because hundreds of artworks were missing from El Museo del Prado in Madrid. Spain’s Tribunal de Cuentas (the Court of Auditors) investigated the matter and determined that the losses were not recent but had occurred over the course of decades. Although some losses were the result of fire or war, other losses went unnoticed due to a subpar tracking and inventory system. Unfortunately, many institutions around the world do not adequately inventory and track their holdings.
Thefts from Private Collections
Works are also frequently stolen from private collections. For instance, the law firm of Borghese Associés SELARL handled a case involving Picasso’s heirs and their electrician uncovered the theft of hundreds of the artist’s artworks during proceedings that took over a decade to complete.
In 2009, Pierre Le Guennec, the electrician who had installed a security system in Pablo Picasso’s villa Notre Dame de Vie in Mougins during 1971, revealed that he had 271 undocumented artworks in his possession. Mr. Le Guennec claimed the artist gifted to him the works as a token of appreciation. These artworks have not been signed or inventoried at the time of the painter’s death in 1973. The pieces resurfaced years later when Mr. Le Guennec requested Claude Ruiz-Picasso, the artist’s son, to authenticate 180 watercolor paintings, lithographs and Cubist collages, as well as two notebooks with 91 drawings (circa 1900-1932). Together these pieces form a heterogeneous collection of Picasso’s art.
Suspecting that the artworks were stolen, the Picasso heirs filed a complaint with the French court. At first, the electrician claimed that Pablo Picasso gifted the artworks to him on or around 1971 or1972 as a “thank you” for his devoted work for the artist during the early 1970s. However, on appeal, Mr. Le Guennec completely changed his story claiming that the artist’s widow Jacqueline donated the object to him. The case proceeded all the way to the Court of Cassation (France’s highest court) that ultimately overturned the decision of the appellate court, and ruled in favor of the heirs. The Court of Cassation remanded the case to the Lyon Court of Appeals, and in 2019, it finally convicted the electrician and his wife for receiving the 271 artworks. In fact, the court’s 41-page decision determined that the statements of the convicted parties are fraudulent and the provenance of the artworks was flawed beyond a reasonable doubt.
Antiquities Looting
Moche Headdress, Marco Museum Collection
The looting of antiquities is often a crime of opportunity. The very nature of unexcavated objects is that their existence is likely unknown. For undiscovered antiquities, they may not have been seen for millennia. In essence, these objects do not have a modern ownership history (provenance); therefore, it is difficult or sometimes impossible to trace them back to their place of origin.
Antiquities looters around the world are generally motivated by money. Yet not all looters earn substantial financial profits, but rather plunder sites to feed their families. The problem is of a global scale, as poverty in developing nations creates incentives for struggling populations to plunder and sell artifacts to illicit traffickers at low prices. Pillaging also occurs in impoverished regions of developed nations, such as Italy, China, Greece and Cyprus. At the same time, these nations or regions often lack resources to protect archaeological sites, creating an opportunity for the looters. As Jan Pronk noted in a speech given at the Rijsmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden, “After all, if you were poor and someone offered you a year’s salary for every object you found, would you not pick up a spade and start digging?”
Peru serves as an excellent example as it has suffered the extensive loss of its heritage through rampant looting, often done by locals supplying artifacts on the international market. The site of Sipán in Peru dates to approximately 700 BC and is assigned to the Moche Culture. By the mid-1980s, that area had been minimally recorded by archaeologists and government surveyors, and it had not been archaeologically excavated. The famed archaeological treasures from Sipán come from a large man-made mound called Huaca Rajada. Beginning in November 1986, a group of raiders tunneled into Huaca Rajada, and after a few months, the group came upon a few golden objects. Just like in a movie, after cutting a hole into the roof of the tunnel, treasures cascaded down onto the group. The thieves filled sacks with riches but were unable to determine how to split profits from the sale. As a result, one of the looters informed the local authorities about the operation, and it was stopped by police. Sadly, items from Sipán continue appearing on the international market.
Looting During Conflict
Our founder, Leila A. Amineddoleh, served as the cultural heritage law expert for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in a matter concerning looted property from Lebanon. In late 2016, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art notified Lebanese authorities that a marble bull’s head, on loan to the museum, appeared to have come from the archaeological site of Sidon. In January 2017, the Lebanese Director General of Antiquities demanded its return.
Repatriation ceremony in Manhattan
The bull’s head was excavated near Sidon from the Temple of Eshmun, dedicated to the Phoenician god of healing. The site was occupied from the 7th century BC to the 8th century AD. Rediscovered in 1900, famed French archaeologist Maurice Dunand excavated the site from 1963 until the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. During a state-sponsored excavation, Dunand discovered the Bull’s Head in 1967. The marble was from the capital of a pillar from the Temple of Eshmun, and it was carved between the 6th and 4th centuries BC, when Lebanon’s Phoenician civilization was ruled by Persia, and its art was influenced by Greek and Persian but also influenced by Greek sources. The head’s discovery was well-documented in the official records and academic sources of the state. Documentation also reports that during the nation’s civil war, the sculpture was moved in 1979 to Beirut to be placed into a secure storage area of the Byblos Citadel for safekeeping. Sadly, the citadel was breached in 1981, and the Bull’s Head was stolen.
The marble went missing for over three and a half decades and then appeared at the Met on loan from collector Michael Steinhardt who had purchased it from other collectors, William and Lynda Beierwaltes. Once Mr. Steinhardt was informed of the work’s problematic provenance, he demanded a refund for the purchase and transferred the title to the object back to the sellers. The movement of the piece from 1981 through 2017 was reconstructed through shipping forms and sales receipts, including documents from dealers known to trade in problematic antiquities. The collectors and dealers involved all claimed they had the right to buy and sell the sculpture. Importantly though, missing from that paperwork was the necessary permission from Lebanon to remove the marble from its borders or sell it. Ultimately, the Bull’s Head was repatriated to Lebanon, in part due to the records and the lack of verifiable legitimate provenance. Sadly, more than 500 Eshmun statues were looted from the Byblos Citadel, and only a handful have been returned to Lebanon. Additional details about the journey of the Bull’s Head can be found here.
Cambodia experienced a brutal period of conflicts and civil wars in the 1960s and 1970s, during which time the archaeological site of Koh Ker fell victim to extensive looting. The dispute over a 10th century sandstone statue of epic warrior Duryodhana began in 2011 when the Kingdom of Cambodia initiated legal action against Sotheby’s. The auction house was selling a 10th century sculpture, that was purportedly looted in or around 1972 from Koh Ker. In fact, experts could pinpoint the exact place from where the statue originated because the base and feet remain in situ.
Photo courtesy of Phnom Penh Post
After being violently removed from its base, the Khmer statue entered the black market and was sold to a Belgian collector in 1975. The collector’s wife consigned the statue for sale at an auction in 2010 and imported it into the U.S. An auction house researcher expressed concerns about the object, stating in an email that she believed it was stolen. That expert later changed her opinion about the sale and advised Sotheby’s that Cambodia generally doesn’t request the return of looted art. On the day of the auction, Cambodian officials demanded that Sotheby’s withdraw the lot and return the statue. Sotheby’s withdrew the item but supported the collector’s ownership claims. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation, and the U.S. filed for a forfeiture. In December 2013, the U.S. government and Sotheby’s ultimately signed a settlement agreement and Sotheby’s returned the statue to Cambodia. Due to that case, the Cambodian government began investigating a number of works taken from the same site. Consequently, a number of similar statues were returned. Around the time of the Sotheby’s return, the Norton Simon Museum repatriated its own looted Cambodian statute to its home. Rather than litigate, the museum offered to return the statue as a “gift.”
Protection of art and cultural objects during the uncertain times of COVID-19
World War II led to a vast displacement of art, conflict in the Middle East resulted in wide-scale looting, and poverty in many “source” nations has been the driving force behind the illicit plunder. The global COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the cultural institutions and private collections is still uncertain; however, players within the market must prepare for various ramifications of this disaster.
Cultural institutions and museums of all types and origins face similar challenges, such as maintaining high levels of security and preservation of the collections, providing their staff with a healthy and safe work environment, soliciting financial endowments, and digitally engaging with their audiences in a meaningful way. The COVID-19 pandemic has already made it difficult for museums to generate the revenue necessary for covering operational costs and adequately staffing their properties. These shortcomings during a worldwide crisis make institutions vulnerable to theft and may lead to the deterioration of art collections. Economic losses aside, security personnel and conservation specialists of some museums feel that their safety is being compromised while at work, and so they choose not to show up at all. For instance, at the onset of the pandemic in early March, the employees of the Louvre Museum in Paris refused to work, citing COVID-19 health and safety concerns. As a result of the protest, on April 16, the International Council of Museums published a series of recommendations for the conservation of museum collections. The publication urges essential staff, including security guards, to stay on the premises of the institutions in order to “to fulfill their primary function of conserving the material and immaterial heritage of humanity.”
As the pandemic has had an undeniable impact on the finances of art-related businesses, various governmental bodies and private foundations across the world are offering financial relief to those entities and individuals. For instance, the French Ministry of Culture allocated 2 million euros in emergency funding to art galleries, labeled art centers and artists-authors. This funding will be operated by the National Centre for Plastic Arts (“CNAP”) and the regional directorates for cultural affairs (“DRAC”). These resources aim to reduce the adverse impact of the pandemic on the cultural institutions and businesses worldwide.
Only time will tell how the COVID-19 pandemic will change the art market and alter the life of museums. But history suggests that it is essential for museums and collectors to take precautionary measures to safeguard their valuable artistic and cultural holdings.
Amineddoleh & Associates LLC co-authored the following blog post with our colleagues at Borghese Associés SELARL in Paris. Borghese Associés, founded in 2009, is a leading business law firm with a boutique art law practice. The firm has a broad art law practice and has handled high-profile art law cases, including the representation of one of Pablo Picasso’s heirs in a case against an art thief convicted of receiving 271 works by the Modern Master. (The case will be featured in our next blog post.) As always, it is a pleasure to work with our esteemed Parisian colleagues.
Vincent van Gogh as a Frequent Target
Singer Laren Museum
March 30, 2020 marked the 167th birthday of celebrated Dutch Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. For the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam, however, that day was not a cause for celebration. Perhaps taking advantage of the museum’s recent closure due to the global health crisis, unidentified criminals infiltrated the premises and stole one of the artist’s paintings, The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884). The thieves entered by simply breaking the glass door of the public entrance. They were in and out of the building within a matter of minutes. While this smash-and-grab triggered the alarm, the police arrived too late to prevent the thieves from absconding with their prize. Since the painting, on loan from the Groninger Museum, was the only van Gogh work stolen in the swift theft, it was likely a specific target, rather than being the victim of a crime of opportunity. The painting is valued at approximately €1.5 million, and after worldwide press coverage about the crime, the painting cannot be sold on the open market.
Van Gogh’s works are hugely popular amongst art lovers. Unfortunately, they are also popular with thieves. The painter’s works are often targeted by the latter, particularly in the Netherlands. Over the past thirty years, a total of twenty-eight paintings were stolen on six separate occasions. Luckily, all of them were recovered. However, that is not the norm for stolen art. Typically, stolen works are never seen again; the recovery rate for stolen art and prosecution of the related criminals is estimated to be between 5 and 10% worldwide. Pilfered works often vanish on the black market and may later re-emerge in private collections. Other times, thieves destroy the works out of fear that the art will serve as evidence for their criminal missteps.
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884-1885)
Notably, two paintings were stolen from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum in 2002. During the early morning hours of December 7, 2002, Octave Durham climbed a fifteen-foot ladder and used a sledgehammer to break a window to enter the Van Gogh Museum. He was able to pass by the infrared security system, cameras and roaming guards. Two paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884-1885), were lifted from the walls, and the thief escaped using a rope with the help of accomplice Henk Bieslijn. The entire process took only three minutes and forty seconds. Unfortunately, neither work was insured at the time, and they were both on loan from the Dutch government. It is significant that in this instance, Durham did not target the paintings specifically, but rather took advantage of an opportunity to gain access to the museum premises and removed the works because they were the smallest and easiest to carry.
However, this specific theft was particularly upsetting because the subjects depicted in the paintings added both sentimental and financial value to the works. The painting of Scheveningen is one of the only two seascapes that van Gogh ever painted. Because it had never entered the art market, it is virtually impossible to properly quantify its worth. The other painting, showing the church in Nuenen, is also remarkable because the church is where van Gogh’s father worked as a pastor. After his father’s death, van Gogh added the mourning figures in black, and gave the painting to his mother as a gift.
Many thought that the stolen paintings were lost forever. Usually, if a work is missing for ten years, there is a very small chance of it ever returning home. However, in September 2016, the works were found in Italy, in the home of a mobster’s mother. The paintings were recovered by the Carabinieri during an investigation of the Amato Pagano clan of the Camorra Mafia family, a group associated with international cocaine trafficking. In January 2016, Italian prosecutors arrested several members of the family and criminals associated with them in connection to a drug ring with contacts in the Netherlands and Spain. Additionally, Italian financial police confiscated about $22.5 million worth of assets belonging to the clan. Both of the paintings were damaged and found without their frames. The paint on the bottom left corner of the seascape had broken away and the edges of the canvas of the church scene had minor damage as well. Luckily, no major damage was reported, and the paintings returned to their rightful home.
Museums as Targets: Poor Security and Opportunities
The Scream by Edvard Munch
Museums are often targeted by thieves due to poor security. Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) was stolen in only 50 seconds from the National Gallery in Oslo on the opening day of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway. Two thieves were aware that a major world event was occurring nearby and that police would not be readily available to nab them. As a result, they broke into the museum through a window, cut a wire holding the painting, and left a note saying, “Thousand thanks for the bad security!” Another example of an opportunistic art theft was the first major art heist of the new millennium, taking place at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford shortly after midnight as the new millennium was rung in. A £3 million work by Paul Cézanne, View of Auvers-sur-Oise (1879-1880), was stolen in a fashion reminiscent of The Thomas Crowne Affair. Known as the “Y2Kaper,” the thief entered the museum shortly after midnight as the British city was celebrating the new year. As everyone was distracted with millennium celebrations, the burglar gained access to the building from the adjoining Oxford University Library (which was undergoing a renovation at the time) before climbing onto the roof, smashing a skylight, setting off a smoke canister, and then lowering himself into the room via rope. Once he obtained the canvas, which took approximately ten minutes, the criminal vanished into a crowd of revelers. Because this was the only painting removed from the museum, it has been speculated that this was a made-to-order art theft; likely, a private collector or interested party commissioned a criminal to steal the coveted painting. However, it is also possible that the crime was tied to organized crime. Ironically, the museum had increased security in 1992 after a spate of recent robberies, including the theft of various items, such as Greek vases, paintings, silverware, and a 16th century painting that were removed by a visitor who smuggled them out of the museum under his coat. Unfortunately though, the museum failed to take precautions against intruders accessing the museum through the construction structure.
Courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA
The highest profile art theft in U.S. history was perpetrated against the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston during the early morning hours of March 18, 1990. Significantly, the timing allowed the thieves latitude because Boston was in disorder due to the city’s famous St. Patrick’s Day celebrations from the evening of March 17 and into the morning of March 18. The criminals, disguised as police officers, subdued two museum security guards and removed thirteen works valued between $600 million and $1 billion. The stolen items include Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert (1664) (valued between $200 million and $300 million), and Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (the Dutch painter’s only known seascape). The thieves were unsophisticated, tearing the paintings from their frames, likely causing substantial damage. Nonetheless, the criminal scheme was clever enough to succeed and the works have never been recovered. The theft is notorious because neither the paintings nor those responsible have been found, despite the offer of a $10 million award for information. The museum continues to work in partnership with the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in the hope that the artworks will be returned to their frames, which continue to hang empty in their original places. Until that time, visitors of the museum will be confronted with the vacant frames serving as a grim reminder of the unfortunate theft.
In France, an astonishing theft took place in May 2010 at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. Tomic Vjeran, nicknamed “Spiderman,” a well-known art and jewelry thief who was already condemned fourteen times for similar actions, took advantage of a deficient security system to steal five of the most beautiful artworks of the museum. The stolen works, estimated to be worth 50 million euros, were Nature morte au chandelier (1922) by Fernand Léger; La Femme à l’éventail (1919), a portrait of Luna Czechowska, by Amedeo Modigliani; Le pigeon aux petits pois, (1911) by Pablo Picasso; La Pastorale (1906) by Henri Matisse; and, last but not least, L’olivier près de l’Estaque (1906), a work that Georges Braque painted in three other versions.
Before the Tribunal Correctionnel de Paris, Spiderman detailed the robbery; it took six days of scouting and preparing. A bay window was dismantled from the outside and then removed using suction cups. To the astonishment of the police, Vjeran explained that the security system shutdown enabled him to move far beyond his original targets, which were the Fernand Léger and the Modigliani paintings. Investigators discovered that Vjeran had been assisted by two accomplices, a 62-year-old antiques dealer, and a 40-year-old watch expert and repairman. The day after the robbery, the antiques dealer and the Vjeran met in an underground car parking lot in the neighborhood of Bastille to hand over the Léger to a buyer from Saudi Arabia in exchange for 80,000 euros. But two days later, the Saudi buyer’s middleman returned the paintings to the antique shop. The theft was simply too high-profile, making the painting unsellable. Unable to unload the stolen paintings, the antique dealer thought about selling the works in Belgium or Israel, where he believed the laws would be more lenient. He even thought, fleetingly, about giving them back to the city of Paris. In July 2010, he presented the Modigliani painting to a friend, a watch expert, and asked him to store the five stolen paintings at his shop, behind a large cupboard. One year later, the police arrested Vjeran and his accomplices. To this day, no one knows for certain what became of the five missing paintings. Sadly, the works may have all been destroyed. Before the criminal court, the watch expert maintained that he had thrown them away in the garbage in a moment of panic, when he realized that his involvement had been discovered.
There have been other notorious robberies in the history of Paris’ museums. The most famous is the theft of Leonardo da Vinci’s La Giaconda (the Mona Lisa) from the Louvre, on the morning of August 21, 1911. Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who had helped fix a protective glass on the masterpiece, found his way inside the Louvre by passing through a hidden door. He managed to steal Mona Lisa, conceal it under his employee’s coat, and bring it back home where it remained hidden under his bed for two years. Peruggia managed to convince the police that he had nothing to do with the theft. During that time, international pressure mounted to find the thief as the scandal spread across the media. As art lovers demanded the return of the masterpiece, Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile flashed across the world, gracing newspapers. In fact, the high-profile theft made the painting the most recognizable artwork in the world. The magistrate in charge of the case sentenced poet Guillaume Apollinaire to prison for a few-day sentence because the poet’s dubious tenant, Guy Piéret, foolishly sold a newspaper the tale of his exploits. These tales included his fictitious theft of the Mona Lisa.
The truth was revealed in 1913 when Peruggia, under the name of Leonardi, tried to sell the Mona Lisa to a Florentine dealer, Alfredo Geri. When Geri, accompanied by M. Poggi, director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi (the Uffizi) in Florence, saw the painting and realized its authenticity, they alerted the police who arrested Peruggia at his hotel. After a triumphant tour in Italy, the Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre on January 4, 1914. As for the thief, he became a national hero for many Italians, claiming that his actions were motivate by patriotism. For his legal defense, he argued that he had “given back” the painting, and thus could not be condemned for theft. The court rejected the argument, but sentenced him to a relatively lenient sentence of only one year in prison.
Our next blog post with examine art thefts as inside jobs and from private collections.
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.
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.
In addition to offering compelling information to historians and art lovers, provenance often plays a central role in ownership disputes. Essentially, you cannot demand the return of an object, if it wasn’t yours to begin with. Without proof of ownership, a party lacks legal standing to successfully make a claim for restitution. (“Standing” is a requirement of Article III of Constitution. It is the term for the ability of a party to demonstrate a sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party’s participation in the case. In simple terms, courts use “standing” to ask, “Does this party have a ‘dog in this fight?’”) For this reason, determining provenance is vital in lawsuits involving stolen property because only parties with an ownership interest can demand restitution.
Oftentimes provenance is central to matters related to Nazi-looted art. But proving ownership can be extremely difficult for individuals victimized by the Nazis because of the events that occurred during WWII. The displacement of art during the war was vast; it is estimated that 20% of art and valuables in Europe were looted by the Nazis (this includes items such as musical instruments, jewelry, furniture, porcelain, books, and other personal property). Sadly, most owners lack documentation to support their restitution demands. As people fled their homes and countries, they left behind not only their property, but paperwork associated with those items. Without that documentation, it is an incredible burden to make a claim for restitution because it is nearly impossible to prove ownership. But for the small minority of owners able to successfully demand return of their property, crucial evidence is sometime found in the most unexpected of places.
Landscape with Smokestacks
That was exactly what led the Goodman (Gutmann) Family to pursue a restitution case against Daniel Searle, a collector who had purchased a stolen Degas landscape. The Gutmanns (a wealthy banking family) had an enviable art collection that the Nazis coveted. Landscape with Smokestacks was placed in storage by the Gutmann Family in 1939 in order to save it from Nazi seizure. However, it was eventually taken by the Nazis after the work’s custodians perished in concentration camps. The Degas painting then resurfaced in Switzerland after the war, and then was acquired by a New York collector in 1951. It was eventually sold to Daniel Searle in 1987, with the assistance of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Interestingly, the Gutmann heirs began a quest to recover an impressive art collection after one of the heirs discovered his true identity. Simon Goodman, whose father had moved to England and changed his name from Gutmann to Goodman, had grown up unaware that he was Jewish or that his family owned an incredible art collection. He had discovered this information after receiving a collection of boxes after his father’s death that contained information about his family’s looted collection and ownership information about some of the pieces.
The Degas painting was on the inventory of missing family treasures. During their research, the Gutmann heirs came across a photograph of the work. “Monuments Woman” Rose Valland heroically recorded information about plundered art, and after the war, presented one of the surviving Gutmann family members with images of their looted property. Although only a black-and-white photo, it was used to establish the provenance, verify legal ownership claims, and resolve the legal dispute. The lawsuit lasted over two years, and ended with a settlement. Searle donated a fifty percent ownership interest in the work to the Art Institute of Chicago, and ceded a fifty percent interest to the Gutmann heirs. As part of the agreement, the museum purchased the Gutmann’s interest based on the market value. It was the first dispute over Nazi-looted art settled in the U.S.(For more information about the Gutmann Family’s provenance research and legal battles, Simon Goodman’s The Orpheus Clock is a gripping book about his family’s struggles.)
Determining provenance can be very challenging. Over time, information about a works’ ownership is lost. Sales documents and receipts are lost, first-hand knowledge about transactions slowly disappears as individuals involved in a sale pass away and memories fade. It is especially challenging to piece together a provenance when parties conceal this vital information. Thieves (whether they are individuals or groups) attempt to erase the truth about works, or create a false provenance, so that they can lay claim to the property. This is exactly what the Nazi Party did as it stole art and valuables across Europe.
An image of the Monument Men with recovered artwork (AP Photo/National Archives and Records Administration)
In 1943, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA) was established under the Civil Affairs and Military Government sections of the Allied armies. Its members, better known as the Monuments Men, worked to protect artworks, archives, and monuments in Europe. 345 men and women served in this group, including well-known art professionals, including curators and historians from the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard and the New York City Ballet. With an overwhelming task to protect sites and return works to rightful owners, the Monuments Men faced an incredible hurdle. Making things even harder were limited resources and a short timeframe in which to conclude their work. Although many works remain missing to this day, the Monuments Men were able to return more than five million looted cultural items.
The first museum in the United States to hire a full-time provenance researcher was the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 2003, they hired Victoria Reed to serve as Curator for Provenance. She has been instrumental in conducting research that has led to the return of a number of stolen arts or payment of financial settlements to rightful owners, such as with Eglon van der Neer’s Protrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior. (Following the MFA’s lead, a number of other institutions have hired provenance researchers to examine items in their collections.) While the MFA Boston is closed, Dr. Reed is posting daily tweets about artworks from the museum’s collection that feature interesting provenance information.
Our founder has served as counsel on a number of stolen art matters. One of the cases in which she served as lead litigation counsel involved a civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture occurs when government agents seize property suspected of being involved in criminal activity. The property owner doesn’t have to be charged with a crime, so the case is actually against the property itself which is why some forfeiture cases have unusual names. Case in point: United States of America v. The Painting Known and Described as ‘Madonna and Child’ attributed to the Florentine Painter Active In The Ambit of Cimabue, Circa 1285–1290, held by Sotheby’s in New York.
The three-decade long disappearance of the thirteenth century painting is a tale about the development of provenance in a legal battle. The story begins in 1977 with the purchase of the panel from a religious mission in London. Co-owners of the painting sold partial interests in the work to other art collectors so that each of the parties owned a percentage of the work. After its purchase, the parties placed the work in a jointly-rented safe deposit in Switzerland, and tried to market the work to sell it.
Unbeknownst to the other parties, one of the co-owners moved the painting to his own safe deposit box in the mid-1980s. In early 1990, he was brought to court. There was an order from an English judge restraining him from selling the painting. However, he used aliases to market the painting. Eventually he hid the painting and he fled to France, and a series of legal conflicts and international police investigations began. The situation quieted down and the co-owner died in Florida in 2006. He left his interest in the painting to his wife who eventually consigned the work in Sotheby’s in 2013.
Due diligence at Sotheby’s revealed that the painting was stolen after the Art Recovery Group discovered that the work appeared in its database of stolen art. The January 2014 sale was stopped. In June of that year, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a complaint against the stolen painting, and Sotheby’s voluntarily forfeited the work. At that point, anyone with an ownership interest was invited to file a claim with supporting documentation. Although there was a gap of over twenty years during which time the painting was hidden, there was substantial documentation supporting our clients’ claims. We developed the evidentiary record in the form of an extensive provenance by supplying the original purchase and sales documents (from the 1970s), bank records from the safe deposit, signed and notarized affidavits, police and INTERPOL reports, the power of attorney allowing one of the owners to sell he work on behalf of the consortium of owners, postmarked letters from the time of the painting’s disappearance, one of the owner’s wills that specifically named the piece, a 1990 article in the Antiquities Trade Gazette, and court decisions against the thief.
With such strong proof of ownership, the case was resolved in the spring of 2015; title was returned to the legitimate owners, and the work was auctioned at Christie’s, with proceeds going to the rightful parties. The co-owner’s widow thought she would be able to sell the work painting because the other co-owners had lost track of the piece over the long lapse of time. However, ownership is part of the permanent provenance that accompanies a work.
Our civil forfeiture case cleared any clouds on the title and the current owner (the individual who purchased the painting at auction) has perfect title because a US court made a definitive ownership determination (as Christie’s noted in its catalog.) The only unanswered question now is attribution (we will address attribution in future posts). The lack of provenance prior to the 1977 purchase makes it particularly challenging to identify the attribution. As of now, the author is identified as “a close follower of Duccio.”
There have been other notorious robberies in the history of Paris’ museums. The most famous is the theft of Leonardo da Vinci’s 
