Cloth “Holy Ieronim in the desert” was returned to the heirs of Max Stern, who was forced to sell the work in 1937

Recently, the New York dealer Richard Feige (Richard Feigen), trading works by old masters, returned one of his paintings - «Holy Hierominate Desert» Lodoviko Carracci (Lodovico Carracci) - heirs of the pre-war owner, a German gallery Max Stern (Max Stern). In 1937, Stern, a Jew by origin, was forced to sell 228 of his paintings from the collection at auction Lempertz in Cologne. Feige bought «Holy Hierominate» in 2000 at the tender, organized by the same auction house. The film has cost him 100 thousand marks (about 45 thousand dollars for the then exchange rate).

After the war, Max Stern sought the return of works sold at Lempertz, but he has nothing left. In 1964, the German Government to pay him compensation. Children from the dealer was not, therefore, he bequeathed his estate to three universities - Concordia and McGill in Montreal and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 2002, the universities come to grips with the search work from the collection of Stern. So far they have managed to return a total of five pieces, but in the past year, a federal appellate courts recognized the United States forced the sale of works from the auction Lempertz «de facto confiscation», so now to make restitution would be much easier.

In the past month another painting from the collection of Stern, «Portrait musicians playing bagpipes »unknown artist painted the XVII century, was confiscated from the art dealer Lawrence Shteygarda (Lawrence Steigard) . On hearing this, Richard Feige decided to find out details about provenanse painting «St. Ieronim», hung in his living room. It turned out that in 2004 the work was entered in a database of stolen works of The Art Loss Register. Gallery has decided to give her heritage Stern Fund, managed by representatives of three universities.

Feige has not yet been applied to the auction house for the compensation. Chapter Lempertz Hanshteyn Henrik (Henrik Hanstein) said that the damages it count, most likely not: in 2000, when the painting was sold, it is not yet considered a stolen product.

By the way, the attribution of the Carracci is already being questioned. In the latter reason, the catalog of paintings the artist, this work is not mentioned. If the forgery or the product of the less well-known painter, the value of the work on the art market may be much reduced.

Material prepared Yulia Maksimova, AI

Source: bloomberg.com , artinvestment.ru