Tallahassee, FL – Authorities Seizing Painting Stolen by Nazis

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    Tallahassee, FL – U.S. authorities are seizing a more than 400-year-old Italian painting that has been on display at a Florida museum, saying it was stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family during World War II and should be returned to the family’s heirs.

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    U.S. Attorney Pamela Marsh announced Friday that the federal government will hold onto the painting until a federal judge can determine the rightful owners.

    The Baroque painting was one of 50 lent to the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee by a Milan museum for an exhibit that closed earlier this year. Federal authorities were planning to take the painting off the walls shortly after noon on Friday.

    The painting, “Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue” by Girolamo Romano, came from the Pinacoteca di Brera museum in Milan. The painting is believed to date to around 1538 and it was purchased by Gentili di Giuseppe in 1914 during an auction in Paris. He died in 1940 shortly after the Nazis occupied France.

    The painting is believed to been among 155 works auctioned off by the French Vichy government in 1941 to pay off debts. But members of di Giuseppe’s Jewish family who fled the country because of the Nazi occupation have said the sale was illegal.

    In September, Marsh’s office ordered the museum to hold onto the painting instead of returning it to Italy. On Friday, Marsh’s office got permission from a judge to let U.S. customs agents to seize the painting.

    Michael Kennedy, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations, said the painting would be removed from the museum sometime Friday and then taken to an “undisclosed location.”

    “It’s an expensive painting, we’re not going to tell anyone where it is,” Kennedy said.

    Back in 2000, two American museums reached settlements with the heirs of di Giuseppe that allowed those museums to keep two pieces of artwork that were in their collections. A French court in 1999 returned five paintings to the family from the Louvre museum in Paris.

    In 2008, the American Association of Museums released guidelines for museums to follow to avoid acquiring artifacts that may have been illegally exported. Museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles have agreed in recent years to return artifacts to Italy that the Italian government says were looted or stolen.


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    3 Comments
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    sayididit
    sayididit
    12 years ago

    Exactly why would a Jewish family hang up a painting entitled “Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue” on their living room wall??