French officials returned thirteen works of art stolen from four Jewish dealers during the Second World War to their heirs, it was announced on December 15th 1999 in Paris. These works, including a Flemish Renaissance painting from the school of Van Orley, two by Luca di Tomme, active in Sienna between 1356 and 1389, two stained glasses from the 16th Century, two 15th Century tapestries, a 15th Century painting representing the Virgin of the Annunciation and an 18th Century marquetry table were stolen by the Nazis from these Jewish art dealers.
These pieces had been recovered in Germany after the war and deposited in French museums pending researches to determine their ownership.
However their legal owners had not claimed them because they had been wrongly listed or authenticated, museum officials said.
These works were seized from the Arnold, André and Jacques Seligmann and Bacri galleries, which were specialising in Renaissance pieces and old masters.
In July 1940, the Arnold Seligmann gallery, run by Jean-Arnold and Armand Seligmann, received the visit of Marshall Goering's envoys who later seized 17 pieces that eventually enriched the collection of Hitler's close aide.
Nazis envoys who were responsible for the theft of a painting and three rare textile pieces also visited the Bacri gallery. Three months later the Nazis seized over 1,000 objects and paintings in the three Seligmann galleries and that of Jacques Bacri.
After the war 695 pieces were surrendered to the Seligmann Galleries and 311 to Jacques Bacri. These firms also received financial compensations from Germany regarding all the missing pieces after the war.
It took the French State over 50 years to identify the owners of these 13 art works. The main reason was that two members of the Seligmann galleries had disappeared, Jean-Arnold who was shot by the Nazis in 1941 and André, who died shortly after his return from the U.S in 1945. All the more these pieces had been badly or wrongly listed and were hard to identify when officials sifted through the Nazis archives and the lists drawn up by those who had been the victims of spoliations.
As an example «The Arrest of Christ» from the school of Van Orley had come back from Germany under the title «The Kiss of Judas» attributed to Cornelis Engelbrechts. The two Luca di Tomme panels had meanwhile been attributed to Bartolo di Fredi in the Goering collection and were recovered with the simple mention «Italy : 15th Century, a Saint and a female Saint». «The Virgin of the Annunciation» of Hartford was on its part described in Nazi lists as by an imitator of Rogier van der Weyden while it had been claimed by its owner as a work by Simon Marmion. French officials thus took many years to identify the legal owners of these pieces. Some of them will probably be auctioned in the months to come.
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