A Baroque landscape painting that went missing during World War II was returned to Germany on Thursday after spending the better part of a century in the United States.
The FBI handed over a work of art by 18th-century Austrian artist Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer to a German museum in a brief ceremony at the German Consulate in Chicago. Representative, the consulate exhibited this pastoral painting depicting the Italian countryside.
Art Restoration International, a company that specializes in finding and recovering stolen and looted art, was contacted last year by a person in Chicago claiming to own a “stolen or looted painting” that was theirs My uncle brought it back to the United States after completing his military service. in World War II.
The painting has been missing since 1945 and was first reported stolen from the Bavarian State Painting Collection in Munich, Germany.It has been added to the repository German Lost Art Foundation 2012, according to a statement from the art restoration company.
“At the heart of our work at Art Renewal International is the research and repatriation of art looted by the Nazis and art found in public or private collections. Sometimes we come across situations where Allied soldiers may have brought items home as Souvenirs or war trophies,” said Christopher Marinello, founder of Arts Renaissance International.
“Being on the winning side doesn’t mean something is right,” he added.
The identity of the Chicago resident who owns the painting has not been revealed. The man initially asked Marinello to pay for the artwork.
“I explained our policy not to pay for stolen art and that the request was inappropriate,” Marinello said.
“We also know that someone tried to sell the painting at the Chicago Art Market in 2011, but it disappeared after the museum filed a claim.”
But with everyone’s help FBI Art Crime Teamlawyers and the museum, Marinello negotiated an unconditional handover of the artwork.
The painting, entitled “Landscape with Italian Character”, will now be paired with its counterpartAccording to the museum, they share similar themes and imagery.
Together, the two paintings form a panoramic scene depicting shepherds and travelers with goats, cows, donkeys, and sheep on a river bank.
Bernd Albert, chief curator of Dutch and German Baroque paintings at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, said that the pair of works will soon be exhibited together at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich for the first time since World War II.
Recovering a long-lost painting “is actually a very rare moment for us,” Albert said. “It’s exciting.”
The Viennese-born artist Lauterer lived from 1700 to 1733.
When war broke out in 1939, much of the Bavarian museum’s collection was evacuated to safety in the region, but Lautrell’s painting has remained missing since the war began, which, according to the museum, suggests it was likely to have been looted.
The Bavarian State Painting Collection first began searching for the painting between 1965 and 1973, but clues to its location did not emerge until decades later.
Ebert flew from Munich to Chicago to retrieve the painting, where he would carefully bubble-wrap the centuries-old landscape and take it home, after an eventful few decades. It will touch up and repair it.
Albert said that luckily it should fit in his suitcase.
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Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. US report is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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