Finding of the Sybilline Books and the Tomb of Numa Pompilius, ca. 1524–1525, workshop of Giulio Romano with Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio. Bibliotheca Hertziana. Courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Like with fine art, it is important to look at the provenance of antiquities. But understanding the history of antiquities involves more than just provenance (the ownership history). It is also essential to examine the provenience (the work’s findspot). A work’s provenience includes more than where it was excavated, it describes the context in which the item was found, providing scholars with essential information about its origin, use, and importance. For instance, the same object might be understood differently if it is found at an altar than if it were found relegated to a corner. Because objects moved across ancient trade routes, their findspots are important to our understanding about exchanges between cultures. Unfortunately, when looters strip an archaeological site of its valuables, scholars lose this context and we are denied access to important knowledge. Plunder and illegal export of antiquities from around the world pose the threat of irreparable harm to mankind’s cultural heritage.
Provenience is also instrumental in resolving ownership disputes, particularly in the application of national patrimony laws. In order for a nation to demand the return of an object originating from within its borders under the National Stolen Property Act, that country must have enacted a patrimony law that vests ownership of the property to the nation. If artifacts are excavated and removed in contravention to these laws, they become stolen goods. As in all matters of theft, the party demanding the return of property (here the nation), must establish rightful ownership. This can be a very challenging task in the case of looted antiquities as a nation might not become aware of a looted item’s existence for many years, and because looted objects typically are not accompanied by paperwork attesting to their pasts.
Very often, antiquities have huge gaps in provenance because these works remain underground–both literally and figuratively–for centuries. An item kept in a tomb for centuries is never exhibited nor passed from owner to owner, and so does not develop a provenance that helps to provide clear title to the artwork. In such cases, the modern provenance (the post-excavation record) of certain antiquities may be appealing to collectors. Generally, the longer a work has been in the public eye, the lower chance a nation might claim it was looted or exported illegally.
The Vatican Museums boast one of the most impressive art and antiquities collection in the world. For the past five centuries, Laocoön and His Sons has been one of its gems, depicting nearly life-size figures from the Trojan War. Laocoön, a priest of Apollo in the city of Troy, warned his fellow Trojans against taking in the wooden horse left by the Greeks outside the city gates. Athena and Poseidon, who favored the Greeks, sent two great sea-serpents to kill Laocoön and his two sons. From the Roman point of view, the death of these innocents was crucial to the decision of Aeneas, who heeded Laocoön’s warning, to flee Troy, leading to the eventual founding of Rome.[1]
Scholars categorize the work as being of the Hellenistic “Pergamene baroque,” a style that began in Greek Asia minor in the 3rd century BC (the best known work being the Pergamon Altar (circa 180-160 BC). In Hellenistic fashion, Laocoön and His Sons displays attention to the accurate depiction of movement: the three men desperately try to break free from the hold of the sinuous serpents. No matter how much they struggle, they remain tragically entangled.
Most historians believe that the marble sculpture is a copy of an earlier bronze. Due to its style and subject matter, art historians believe the original Laocoön and His Sons was sculpted around 200 BCE in Pergamon. This theory is supported by Pliny the Elder who admires the piece in Volume XXXVI of Natural History. He attributes the work to three sculptors from Rhodes, and places its location in the palace of the Emperor Titus, where it possibly remained until its modern discovery.
The statue group was found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and immediately identified as the Laocoön as described by Pliny the Elder. The group was excavated in February 1506 in the vineyard of Felice De Fredis. At the request of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo and Giuliano da Sangallo were present at the unearthing. Sangallo’s son, only 11-years-old at the time, wrote an account about the excavation over sixty years later:
“The first time I was in Rome when I was very young, the Pope [Julius II] was told about the discovery of some very beautiful statues in a vineyard near Santa Maria Maggiore [on the Esquiline Hill]. The pope ordered one of his officers to run and tell Giuliano da Sangallo to go and see them. He set off immediately. Since Michelangelo Buonarroti was always to be found at our house, my father having summoned him and having assigned him the commission of the Pope’s tomb, my father wanted him to come along too. I joined up with my father and off we went. I had climbed down to where the statues were, when immediately my father said, ‘That is the Laocoon, which Pliny mentions.’ Then they dug the hole wider so that that they could pull the statue out. As soon as it was visible everyone started to draw, all the while discoursing on ancient things, chatting about the ones [ancient statues owned by the Medici] in Florence.”[2]
The exact spot of its finding was not clear for centuries, except for vague statements, such as “near Santa Maria Maggiore” or “near the site of the Domus Aurea.” The vineyard of Felice de Fredis, noted in the sales document to the Pope, was just inside the Servian Wall on the southern spur of the Esquiline, east of the Sette Sale (the cisterns) supplying the nearby imperial Baths of Titus and Trajan which were built over the reviled Domus Aurea of Nero. This area was once the site of the Gardens of Maecenas, where Tiberius later resided.[3] This information was ascertained from a document recording De Fredis’ purchase of the vineyard 14 months before the statue’s discovery. (De Fredis’ house survives today.)
Pope Julius II immediately acquired the group and had it displayed in the Cortile delle Statue (Courtyard of the Statutes), making it the centerpiece of the collection. A base was eventually added in 1511. The Laocoön’s discovery influenced art into the Baroque period, with Michelangelo particularly taken by the piece. The sculptural group was depicted in prints and small models, becoming famous throughout Europe. The work is widely regarded as one of mankind’s greatest artistic achievements. Countless writers have mused about its qualities, with Johann Joachim Winkelmann writing about the paradox of admiring beautiful in a depiction of death and failure. Johann Goethe wrote of the work, “A true work of art, like a work of nature, never ceases to open boundlessly before the mind. We examine, — we are impressed with it, — it produces its effect; but it can never be all comprehended, still less can its essence, its value, be expressed in words.[4]
The statue faced an uncertain future toward the end of the 18th century. In July 1798 it was taken to France in the wake of the French conquest of Italy. It was displayed when the new Musée Central des Arts, later the Musée Napoléon, opened at the Louvre in November 1800. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, when much of the art plundered by France was returned, the Laocoön returned to the Vatican in January 1816.
Few pieces in existence today can match the superb provenience of Laocoön and His Sons, typically leaving antiquities collectors with limited knowledge when making a purchase. In truth, some collectors have developed a tolerance for scant information, accepting that some degree of risk will always be present in the market. In such cases, collectors rely on the information that is available, namely the work’s provenance since it reemerged into the public’s awareness. One exemplary piece with a rich provenance is a 900-year-old large black stone carving of Lokanatha from India sold through Christie’s Auction House in 2017.
Leiko Coyle with the record-breaking antiquity. Courtesy of Christie’s.
Standing nearly five feet tall and carved from a single piece of stone, the work depicts a seated Lokanatha Avalokiteshvara, the Buddhist deity embodying compassion. Lokanatha is identified by a seated Buddha set in the center of his crown and a long, blooming lotus draped over his left shoulder. The piece also features plump, youthful feet typical of portrayals of divinity and interlocking coils of hair (not unlike the serpents entangling Laocoön and his sons). Although the statue has lost both arms, a common occurrence for Buddhist statues that have survived to modernity, Lokanatha retains a striking and illuminating presence.
The work’s power is due in part to its impressive size, a trait that sets it apart from other works made during the same era. The piece is dated to the Pala Period of the 12th century, which was named for the expansive empire that then controlled what is now West Bengal in India and Bangladesh. This empire produced remarkably detailed and sophisticated works of sculpture, making pieces such as the Lokanatha highly sought after by collectors.
The physical characteristics are not the only thing that attracted bidders to this piece: it has a sterling provenance. “The most remarkable thing about this sculpture, besides its quality and sheer size, is its provenance,” says Christie’s specialist Leiko Coyle in the weeks leading up to auction.[5] Ms. Coyle worked with the consignor to successfully investigate the provenance of the exquisite piece. The work first reappeared in 1922 as the centerpiece of one of America’s first collections of Indian art, established by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The work then entered a private European collection in 1976, where it remained for 40 years before going up for sale.
The catalog entry for the piece recounts the following information:
“It was first acquired in the year 1922 for the Boston Museum by none other than Dr. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)… In 1917, when the museum was already world famous for its rich collection of Chinese and Japanese art, it obtained a substantial assemblage of Indian art from Coomaraswamy who had begun amassing the material mostly in India under the British Raj around 1910. At the time there was no restriction in the movement of art among the various nations or from continent to continent. One of the greatest patrons and benefactors of the museum Dr. Denman Ross (1853-1935), a wealthy Bostonian and a professor of art and design at Harvard University (as well as a MFA trustee) had been steadily forming a vast private collection of art of global diversity, including India since the late 19th century... Ross and Coomaraswamy had met in London in the first decade of the 20th century and it was largely due to their cooperation that the museum had secured the famous Goloubew Collection of Indian and Persian paintings in 1914 which Coomaraswamy would publish a few years after joining the museum in 1917.”
The work’s history and public display assured buyers with a level of confidence that the statue would likely not be subject to a repatriation claim. In a market with imperfect records, this is an ideal history.In the case of the Lokanatha, that confidence translated to a sale price of $24.6 million dollars, setting a record for South Asian art.
[2] Letter of Francesco da Sangallo, quoted in Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aestheticsin the Making of Renaissance Culture (1999)
The following was written by Jennifer Mass, the President of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, LLC. She has worked on the scientific analysis of artworks for prominent international collectors and museums. Her work has been featured around the globe, in sources including National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal, BBC, and the New York Times.
Provenance is important for all objects of artistic or cultural significance, and scientific studies can support or oppose conclusions about a work’s history. Scientific research is commonly conducted to address questions about an object’s history, attribution, condition, or materials of manufacture. The potential of scientific analysis for provenance research is just being recognized, even though science has been used to study cultural heritage for over a century; scientific investigations in the context of art started in nineteenth-century laboratories established at the Rathgen Laboratory in Berlin and the National Gallery in London.
ANACHRONISMS
One of the things that scientific study does best is to reveal anachronistic materials or technologies. Anachronistic elements are materials or technologies that were not available when the work was purported to have been produced, and thus these elements can have several implications. Most often, anachronisms can reveal that a work was not created at the time that it was purported to have been made.
A work may have been created in the style of the artist or as a copy (possibly made decades or centuries after the original). Some findings reveal works that have been produced with the specific intent to deceive, while others were not created with malicious intent. Provenance enters this discussion frequently, since it is possible (and even common) that a work revealed by scientific study to be a later copy was originally prepared to be exactly that. The work subsequently enters the art market with its original provenance either lost or deliberately obfuscated. Such works erroneously become unexpected ‘finds.’ For example, sometimes a work descends within a family and the original history of the work is lost. Alternately, objects with broken provenances wind up in a local dealer’s shop through estate sales. In this way, a work that was never intended to deceive enters the art market with a mistaken attribution and gaps in its provenance.
Some types of artwork are more susceptible to loss of provenance than others. The provenances of antiquities are almost never complete unless the object moves straight from an archaeological excavation to an art museum, and then is later deaccessioned by the museum. Outside of this scenario, the possibility of antiquities reaching the art market with a complete and intact provenance is exceedingly low. Antiquities collections assembled from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century can be found throughout Europe, but records for works within those collections are highly variable (luckily, with a keen eye, collectors’ marks can occasionally be found). This represents a minor problem, however, when compared to illegally looted cultural items that reach the art market after being smuggled out if their countries of origin. Such works are subsequently given an invented provenance, typically with seemingly complete (but false) documentation.
PHYSICAL RECORD
The physical record of an object’s provenance includes gallery labels, collector’s stamps, historic photographs, sales receipts, certificates of authenticity, museum exhibition catalogues, and auction catalogues. Correspondence between a dealer and collector, between an auction house and collector, and probate inventories can also be illuminating. Some of the most valuable provenance information can come from correspondence between the artist and the collector. Even guest books from an artist’s home are requested as supporting evidence that a piece descended in a family belonged to a family member known to the artist. While such documentation was once considered definitive proof of ownership, there have been numerous examples of false documentation created to invent the appearance of a plausible provenance for a fake object (as in the case of Michigan art dealer Eric Ian Hornak Spoutz).
Helene Beltracchi posing as her late grandmother
Now infamous for his clever forgery scheme, Wolfgang Beltracchi used his wife to imitate her grandmother in black-and-white photographs purported to be period images of works that were actually recent forgeries. The British team of John Drewe (seller) and John Myatt (forger) ‘spiked’ British archives with false documents to create provenances for forgeries so that researchers would fall upon the falsified information and believe in the veracity of forged works. To successful create this archival information, Drewe accessed stationary from London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, and wrote to the artists’ families requesting letters of authentication. Finally, he inserted false documents into the archives of numerous English institutions, including the Tate Gallery.
SCIENTIFIC TESTING
Scientific testing plays a role in verifying the paper trail that should accompany artworks. Knowledge of the history of photographic processes, photographic papers, paper fiber distributions, paper fillers, optical brighteners, and ink compositions is critical for a successful scientific examination. False paper labels and documents are also major problems in the antique furniture market and in the trade of rare and valued violins such as those crafted by Stradivarius.
Many commonly employed scientific tools can be applied to examining cultural materials. From the most low-tech to the more sophisticated instrumental methods, these tools may play important roles. A high-powered visible light source and even a relatively low magnification lens can reveal that a work has been substantially changed or is not what it purports to be (altered signatures are commonly revealed in this manner). Even taking exact measurements of a work is critical, as these can change substantially over time, sometimes intentionally to obscure the history of a work that has been stolen or looted. It is important to examine not just the presentation surface of the object, but the underside or verso, as well. Scientists document every label and marking and any materials that appear not to be original. The careful and systematic documentation of objects on the art market is overlooked with shocking frequency. It is important to systematically study both the object and each document that is presented with the object as part of its provenance.
Different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum can also be used to study a work holistically. This includes using long-wave ultraviolet light to examine the characteristic fluorescence of the artists’ materials. Information about the papers and inks on any labels or stamps on the piece can be further studied in this manner. Watermarks on paper documents can be studied by x-radiography as well as transmitted light imaging.
Multispectral and hyperspectral imaging techniques can greatly assist in making faded, illegible, or even intentionally erased signatures visible on documents, making these tools ideal for studying the physical record of provenance. Multispectral imaging uses filters to extract different “slices” of the infrared and visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, allowing one to recover information not obtainable using traditional illumination. X-ray fluorescence, an elemental analysis technique, can be used to compare the inks used on paper labels and in stamps applied to official documents and letters. Similarly, Raman spectroscopy, a molecular analysis tool, can be used to identify inks. A second molecular analysis technique, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), is an excellent method for identifying inappropriate binding media in inks, such as the use of an acrylic resin where a drying oil-based formulation is expected.
ALTERED (AND “ALTARED”) WORKS
Science enters the discussion of a work’s provenance when there are questions about whether a work being studied is in fact the same object that was described, photographed, or drawn in an earlier decade or century. The appearance of an object of art can change dramatically over its lifetime, particularly when the piece is an antiquity that has survived for centuries or millennia. When this happens, debate occurs about how a work in its current condition relates to historic descriptions of the piece. If a positive identification cannot be made, then the provenance ascribed to the work may be incorrect.
3 of the 6 panels from the Altarpiece of Certosa, painted by Perugino.
One observable change in paintings is when a large-scale work is cut and sold as two or more smaller scale works. Intensive provenance and scientific research are needed to identify and reunite such fragments. While the dimensions of a stolen painting are commonly reported, it is not unusual for canvases to be trimmed several times throughout their lifetimes, sometimes during a reframing and other times for the express purpose of disguising the identity of the work to re-introduce it to the art market with an invented provenance. The absence of tacking margins on a painting makes it impossible to know if the current dimensions of the work represent its original dimensions. Double-sided paintings on panel, especially altarpieces, can be split through their wood cores and then introduced to the art market as two original works with a concomitant loss of provenance. Paintings from royal collections can have their provenances altered or obfuscated when their coats of arms are painted over, or entirely new coats of arms can be added to the original painting as the painting changes hands.
In the case of porcelain, changes are sometimes made to wares to give them new provenances that will increase their market value. Examples include Chinese export porcelain, which has a history of modification throughout the 20th century. Early 19th century table wares with period borders would be purchased inexpensively, and then important armorial decorations would be added to provide a false provenance and increased historical importance for the pieces. Foliate decorations or ciphers are etched off the surface of a table ware with acid, and the original decoration of a piece is replaced with a different, more rare and valuable, fired-on decoration to give the piece a more important provenance. These later additions can often be detected using x-ray fluorescence, since the overglaze enamels typically contain colorants or fluxes that are not appropriate to the purported dates of production.
Likewise, the documentation paper trail that constitutes a provenance is becoming a rich area for scientific study. As databases of stamp and label inks, papers, optical brighteners, and paper fillers continue to grow, the possibility of creating a false provenance on paper will become increasingly difficult. Scientists face the constant challenge to stay one step ahead of forgers, of which invented provenance is only one of the most recent. However, a commitment to objective and rigorous examination and technological innovation can keep us at the forefront of protecting the legacy of our global cultural patrimony.
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.
The Vatican Museums boast one of the most impressive art and antiquities collection in the world. For the past five centuries, Laocoön and His Sons has been one of its gems, depicting nearly life-size figures from the Trojan War. Laocoön, a priest of Apollo in the city of Troy, warned his fellow Trojans against taking in the wooden horse left by the Greeks outside the city gates. Athena and Poseidon, who favored the Greeks, sent two great sea-serpents to kill Laocoön and his two sons. From the Roman point of view, the death of these innocents was crucial to the decision of Aeneas, who heeded Laocoön’s warning, to flee Troy, leading to the eventual founding of Rome.[1]
The statue group was found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and immediately identified as the Laocoön as described by Pliny the Elder. The group was excavated in February 1506 in the vineyard of Felice De Fredis. At the request of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo and Giuliano da Sangallo were present at the unearthing. Sangallo’s son, only 11-years-old at the time, wrote an account about the excavation over sixty years later:
One of the things that scientific study does best is to reveal anachronistic materials or technologies. Anachronistic elements are materials or technologies that were not available when the work was purported to have been produced, and thus these elements can have several implications. Most often, anachronisms can reveal that a work was not created at the time that it was purported to have been made.
Different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum can also be used to study a work holistically. This includes using long-wave ultraviolet light to examine the characteristic fluorescence of the artists’ materials. Information about the papers and inks on any labels or stamps on the piece can be further studied in this manner. Watermarks on paper documents can be studied by x-radiography as well as transmitted light imaging.
