Like other nations rich in archaeological material, Mexico has suffered a great deal of looting and illegal export of its cultural heritage over the past decades. Despite enacting protective legislation dating back to the late 19th century, cultural heritage objects from Mexico continue to be smuggled out of the country and sold on the open market. These items, many of which hail from pre-Columbian indigenous societies such as the Maya and Aztec, are highly prized by museums and private collectors alike. Stelae (free-standing commemorative monuments erected in front of pyramids or temples and made from limestone), polychrome vessels, jade and gold funerary masks, stone altars, and sculptured figurines are among the many types of objects offered for sale. This is a profitable business worldwide; according to Sotheby’s, its auctions of these items have reached nearly $45 million over the past 15 years. (One of our previous blog posts details the theft of pre-Columbian antiquities worth over $20 million from Mexico’s National Museum of Archaeology on Christmas Day 1985, and how authorities recovered them 3 years later.)
Pre-Colombian Stelea Photo Credit: National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
In light of these circumstances, Mexico has recently taken several concrete steps to strengthen efforts to track down and recover cultural and historical artifacts. In 2011, the National Institute for Anthropology and History (NIAH) announced the launch of a new unified database for cultural property, which allows for the inscription of cultural goods from anywhere within Mexico. Each item in the database is provided with a unique ID number and accompanying details (such as type, material, dimensions, and provenance), resulting in a publicly accessible and standardized system. This is an invaluable tool that will aid the government in protecting the country’s approximately 2 million movable artifacts.
Mexico has also implemented measures to further protect heritage items already removed from within its borders. In March 2013, the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Peru contested the saleof pre-Columbian art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum at Sotheby’s Paris. All these countries have similar laws vesting ownership of antiquities in the State; therefore, they alleged that the sale was illegal because the objects were not accompanied by export licenses or sufficient provenance information confirming that the works were removed prior to the passage of the relevant laws. Nonetheless, the sale went ahead as planned. A French diplomat stated that the items did not appear on the Interpol database or ICOM Red List, and as such were not considered looted or stolen. (This statement was made even though pre-Columbian antiquities are underrepresented on both lists.) Ultimately, nearly half of the lots failed to sell, and the total sales proceeds fell far below the pre-sale estimate. Public pressure may have played a role in staving off bidders.
Despite this controversy, auctions of similar items have continued. In September 2019, Mexico and Guatemala jointly denouncedthe auction of pre-Columbian artifacts at French auction house Drouot. The auction house claimed the sale was “perfectly legitimate” and proceeded to sell 93% of the lots, netting $1.3 million for the sale. In response, the consigner, Alexandre Millon, statedthat he was a victim of “opportunistic cultural nationalism.” This stoked further tension among countries of origin and market countries.
Teotihuacan mask, ca. 450–650 Photo Credit: Christie’s
In February 2021, NIAH lodged a formal legal claim against Christie’s over the sale of 33 pre-Columbian objects, including a stone sculpture of the goddess of fertility Cihuatéotl estimated at $722,000-$1.08 million and a Teotihuacán green stone mask of Quetzalcóatl estimated at $420,000-$662,000. Notably, the mask previously belonged to French dealer Pierre Matisse, son of artist Henri Matisse. While Christie’s maintained that it was confident in the legitimate provenance of the items, historian and archaeologist Daniel Salinas Córdova indicated that the circumstances under which the items had left their places of origin was still unclear. He reiterated that auctioning pre-Columbian antiquities is dangerous because it “promote[s] the commercialization and privatization of cultural heritage, prevent[s] the study, enjoyment, and dissemination of the artifacts, and promote[s] archaeological looting.” Although the sale proceeded and the legal claim has not yet been resolved, Mexico continues to enforce its patrimonial rights.
In September 2021, ambassadors from 8 Latin American Countries (Mexico, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, and Peru) banded together to stopan auction of pre-Columbian artifacts in Germany. Mexican Secretary of Culture Alejandra Faustro sent a letter to the Munich-based dealer, Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger, citing Mexico’s 1934 patrimony law and reiterating the government’s commitment to recovering its cultural heritage. Mexico’s ambassador to Germany, Francisco Quiroga, even visited the auction house in person in an attempt to block the sale. A complaint was also filed with the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico. The auction took place, but of the 67 pieces identified as being Mexican, only 36 sold. Notably, one of the highlights – an Olmec mask with an estimate of €100,000 – did not achieve the reserve price.
That same month, Mexico announced the creation of a new team composed of National Guard personnel tasked with the recovery of stolen archaeological pieces and historical documents. The nation’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, credited Italy with the idea. He stated, “Italy has a special body to recover stolen archaeological pieces. We are going to follow that example, I have given the instruction for the National Guard to constitute a special team for the purpose,” Lopez Obrador said.
As recently as November 2021, the Mexican government issued a letter questioning the legality of two auctions in Paris (at Artcurial and Christie’s) selling pre-Columbian objects. Embassy officials and the Mexican Secretary of Culture asked for the sales to be halted on the grounds that they “stri[p] these invaluable objects of their cultural, historical and symbolic essence, turning them into commodities or curiosities by separating them from the anthropological environment from which they come.” Only a few months earlier (in July), the governments of Mexico and France had signed a Declaration of Intent on the Strengthening of Cooperation against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property, which was meant to signal a recommitment towards the restitution and protection of each nation’s cultural heritage. Although Mexican officials appealed to UNESCO, bidding opened as scheduled on Artcurial’s online platform (with lots priced at $231-$11,600) and Christie’s earned over $3.5 million in its own sale. The day before the Christie’s sale, the embassies of Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru in France issued ajoint statementdecrying the “commercialization of cultural property” and “the devastation of the history and identity of the peoples that the illicit trade of cultural property entails.”
Nonetheless, Mexico’s persistence has borne fruit. In September 2021, it was able to halt the sale of 17 artifacts at a Rome-based auction house. The Carabinieri TPC seized the objects after an inspection revealed that they had been illegally exported, andreturnedthem to Mexico in October. The successful recovery of these objects demonstrates the importance of international cooperation. Many governments’ resources are stretched thin policing their own borders for cultural heritage smuggling and theft, and therefore greatly benefit from assistance by foreign law enforcement. It is also an example of how successful cultural diplomacy can be in the recovery of such objects.
The letter signed by Hernán Cortés recovered by the Mexican authorities. Photo Credit: The National Archives
In addition to law enforcement and government agencies, laypeople have a crucial part to play in the recovery of looted or illegally exported artifacts. For instance, a group of academics in Mexico and Spain helped thwartthe sale of a 500-year-old letter linked to conquistador Hernán Cortés. The letter, dating back to 1521, had been offered for sale by Swann Galleries in New York in September 2021. It was expected to fetch $20,000-$30,000. By searching online catalogues of global auction houses and a personal trove of photographs depicting Spanish colonial documents, the group traced the letter’s provenance to the National Archive of Mexico (NAM), a UNESCO World Heritage Site. An image of the letter had been taken by a Mormon genealogy project, which provided supporting evidence. Furthermore, the group unearthed 9 additional documents linked to Cortés that had been sold at auction – including at Bonhams and Christie’s – between 2017 and 2020. One of these had been sold previously at Swann Galleries for $32,500 and later displayed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York as part of an exhibition. It was confirmedthat all the documents had been stolen from the NAM – they were surgically excised from books – and illegally exported. In response, Swann Galleries cancelled the planned auction. The purchaser of the aforementioned letter returned it in good faith to the auction house. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry enlisted the help of the US Department of Justice to repatriate the 10 manuscripts, in cooperation with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations. The manuscripts were formallyhanded overin September 2021.
In the latest entry of our firm’s ongoing Provenance Series, we discuss a new Polish law that will likely have serious negative implications for claimants seeking the return of property looted during the Second World War. In order to understand the context giving rise to this law, we delve into the country’s history of cultural heritage looting from 1939-1993, recent restitution cases, the provenance of the famous Czartoryski Collection, and the potential effects of Poland’s new law on lawsuits involving Nazi looted art and cultural heritage.
The Sacking of Poland’s Cultural Property During and After WWII
Germans looting the Zachęta Museum in Warsaw in the summer of 1944
It has been estimated that Poland suffered the staggering loss of 70% of its tangible cultural heritage during WWII at the hands of both the Nazis and the Soviet Union. This unprecedented loss amounts to approximately 500,000 cultural objects; many still unaccounted for, including masterpieces by Raphael, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, and other beloved Old Masters. The looting campaign was systematic, as the Nazis had a plan in place before invading Poland in 1939. Seizures were overseen by high-ranking officials, and then exacerbated by the Soviet Army and its subsequent decades-long occupation. Although the Nazis kept extensive documentation of their newly acquired spoils, much of the goods and records were lost during their evacuation of the Polish territories in 1944 and the ensuing turmoil. While the confiscations involved many Jewish families, not all property belonged to this minority; Christians, Roma, and political dissidents were also targeted. To illustrate, in 2007 a Polish count made a claim to a medieval cross worth $500,000 that was found in the trash in Austria, which had previously been forcibly removed from Poland. (The count is a member of the aristocratic Czartoryski family, whose collection is discussed below.)
Thus, restitution is a complex and sensitive subject given the horrific scale of suffering experienced by the Polish population both during and after WWII. A core factor complicating the return of cultural objects is the confiscation of such items by the Communist regime in the years after WWII, as Poland was not considered a sovereign nation with the capacity to enforce its national laws, particularly with respect to private property, until 1993. In some ways, the Communist mentality is still felt with regards to state-controlled property, including cultural objects. It is important to note that under Poland’s patrimony laws, dating as far back as 1918, cultural heritage is generally considered sovereign property. Therefore, recovery efforts are typically aimed at tracking down works for future custody and display in national museums and collections.
An additional obstacle is that class action suits to recover property from victims without heirs are regarded as incompatible with Polish law, as in the case of international Jewish organizations that claim property taken from Jews that have no living descendants. All these factors have resulted in Poland lagging behind other countries regarding the restitution of WWII-looted objects, despite some success stories (discussed below), and their cooperation with international organizations and law enforcement. Overall, the restitution process is expensive and time consuming for claimants, and the new law imposing a strict statute of limitations on claims will create further hindrances.
Polish Law and Difficulties in Returning Nazi Looted Cultural Heritage
Portrait of a Seated Woman by Thomas Couture (Photo courtesy of the German Lost Art Foundation)
Over the past decade, the Polish government has increased its efforts to recover looted cultural items from collections abroad. In 2011, the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage’s Division of Looted Art created a website to publicize its recovery efforts and assist in identifying missing works. The Division manages the only national cultural database of wartime losses and has gathered information on over 63,000 objects including paintings, coins, vehicles, sculpture, books, maps, toys, carpets, furniture, metalwork, and jewelry, among other items of artistic, historical, and sentimental value. The public can also access the list of recovered artworks online and use the Art Sherlock app to identify stolen or looted works. In 2012, it was announced that one of the most famous missing pieces, Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man, had been supposedly found in a bank vault in an undisclosed location. However, it still has not entered the public eye. (One of our previous blog posts discusses the provenance of this fascinating work in more detail.) Moreover, this type of information gathering is time-consuming and requires both willing participation and accurate data. Collectors, dealers, and purchasers may be wary of publicly submitting such details if they come to realize that the provenances of works in their possession are problematic.
Another challenge for restitution claims is the applicable statute of limitation. Statutes of limitation are meant to ensure that a party is not prejudiced by another party’s undue delay or inaction in making a claim. In theory, this helps prevent false or outdated claims from commencing after proof has been lost or blurred by the passage of time. However, the strict application of statutes of limitations to Nazi looted property seems unjust and unfair, as a stolen item’s whereabouts are typically unknown for extended periods of time. If a private collector is in possession of such items, they may be hidden for years away from public view. Unless they are sold on the open market, for all intents and purposes, the works will have disappeared.
The Gurlitt Trove
A notorious example of this phenomenon is the “Gurlitt Trove,” containing nearly 1,400 works worth approximately $1.35 billion and which was discovered in 2012. Cornelius Gurlitt inherited the pieces from his father, an art dealer linked to the Nazis, and stashed them away for decades. After a chance cash check during a train journey, authorities became suspicious of tax evasion and raided Gurlitt’s apartment where they found a treasure trove or art. Gurlitt refused to return the works and argued that lawsuits would be blocked on statute of limitations grounds. Under German law, if a court found that Gurlitt was a good faith purchaser, he would have been entitled to keep the objects. Gurlitt ultimately reached an agreement with the Bavarian state prosecutor to return certain works to the heirs of their former owners. After his death in 2014, it was discovered that Gurlitt had bequeathed his collection to a Swiss museum. The German Lost Art Foundation, an organization founded by the German government, spent the next 6 years performing provenance research on the collection and identified several looted works that were then returned. These included Portrait of a Seated Woman by Thomas Couture (returned in January 2019 due in part to a tiny detail in the work) and Quai de Clichy by Paul Signac (returned in July 2019). Sadly, only a handful of works have been restituted to date because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate provenance information.
The Gurlitt controversy demonstrates that applying strict time limitations to claims may undermine the purpose of Holocaust-related restitution doctrines, which is to seek justice for those who were violently targeted by the Nazis. The Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, drafted in 1998, encourage participating nations to return looted art to original owners or their heirs. Steps should be taken to achieve a just and fair solution, according to the circumstances of each specific case. While these principles are non-binding, they recognize that moral claims have a role to play in lawsuits concerning Nazi looted cultural property.
New Legislation in Poland
These issues have now been exacerbated by recent Polish legislation. Just this month, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a law reducing the statute of limitations on all restitution cases to 30 years since the theft’s occurrence. In practical terms, this means that restitution of Nazi-looted items will become impossible since the thefts occurred nearly 80 years ago. Both the U.S. and Israeli governments, in addition to many cultural heritage experts, have denounced the decision. Although the law was criticized as “immoral” and a “disgrace,” the Polish government has defended its actions by saying that the new rules aim to end fraud and stop irregularity concerning property restitution, which the President terms “an era of legal chaos.” Last week, our founder was quoted in Artnet regarding the “overwhelming obstacles” victims in restitution cases face, including how proving legal title to stolen art decades later in a court of law is a tremendous challenge. The new law fails to account for these obstacles and the practical difficulties in overcoming them.
The Polish legislature could potentially carve out an exception for Holocaust looted property to prevent outstanding claims from being blocked, but the current law treats all property equally. The law has additionally been characterized as problematic for seemingly undermining Poland’s own efforts to recover cultural items at the national level. We discuss recent examples of returned Polish cultural property in the following two sections as a counterpoint to the new law.
A Spanish Museum Returns Flemish Paintings to Poland
Earlier this year, the Museum of Pontevedra in Spain announced that it would return two paintings by Flemish artist Dieric Bouts to Poland. The late 15th Century works depict the Virgin of Sorrows and Jesus Christ in his Ecce Homo aspect. They were purchased from one of the museum’s patrons who likely acquired them from a Spanish dealer in the 1970s. The paintings were displayed openly for years, without any suspicion regarding their origins. Then, in late 2019 the museum was alerted by Polish authorities that the paintings closely resembled ones looted by the Nazis that were destined as a gift for Hitler. It is unclear when or how the paintings arrived in Spain, but it is certain that they were taken by the Nazis from the medieval Goluchów Castle in Poznan since they appeared in a German inventory of the country’s most valuable cultural items during WWII. After receiving notification from Poland, the museum engaged a team of experts to examine the works, which were found to match the missing items.
The museum indicated it would return the works to Poland. Polish authorities commended the museum’s willingness to do so voluntarily, even though it had acquired them in good faith (as such, the museum had a legal claim of ownership under Spanish law). The case was cited as an example of integrity and transparency. César Mosquera, vice president of the Pontevedra city council, announced that they were proud to return these works in light of their dark origins.
The Provenance of the Czartoryski Collection
Lady with an Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci
The famed Czartoryski Collection has reached mythical proportions in Poland, not only due to the breadth of its works, but also the family’s travails. This aristocratic family is closely tied to the political and cultural history of the Polish state. In 1796, Princess Izabella Czartoryska opened the first Czartoryski Museum at her residence in Pulawy, showcasing her antiques and paintings. Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine and Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man formed part of this esteemed group. During the Russian occupation of Poland in 1830, the family fled and ultimately resettled in Paris. While the Raphael painting was lost, the Princess saved the Leonardo by sending it 100 miles south to the Czartoryski palace at Sieniawa, before it joined the family in Paris. The Czartoryskis returned to Poland and opened another two museums by 1878, one in Warsaw and one in Goluchów Castle. The Castle collection consisted of over 5,000 decorative art objects and several hundred valuable paintings. In 1939, as the Nazis approached Poland, the widow of Prince Adam Ludwik Czartoryski removed the most valuable works from the castle, concealed them in 18 boxes, and hid them behind a wall in the wine cellar. However, Nazi officials coerced her into revealing the objects’ location. The Nazis confiscated the items and moved them to the National Museum of Warsaw in 1941, where they were inventoried and photographed. Some of the pieces were taken to Austria, while others were pillaged by deserters and refugees at the end of the war. Lady with an Ermine was fortunately returned in 1946, after its discovery by Allied soldiers (the Monuments Men) in Germany. Unfortunately, the collection was then under the Communists’ control until the fall of the Soviet Union. The family has spent decades attempting to track down their treasures. Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski, born and raised in Spain, has made it his life’s mission to recover what was stolen and established the Princes Czartoryski Foundation in 1991 for this purpose.
In 2016, the Prince signed an agreement with the Polish government selling the collection of 86,000 artworks and 250,000 historic manuscripts to the state for €100 million (a fraction of its total value). It was considered a tremendous bargain for Poland, and the sale was hailed as a donation. The agreement stipulated that the National Museum in Krakow would control the buildings owned by the Czartoryski family and used for the display of the works, and the collection was made publicly available in 2019 after extensive renovations. Despite some controversy over the nature of the purchase, the collection now attracts visitors from all over the world. The government also signed a separate agreement with the Czartoryskis for the acquisition of Goluchów Castle and its art collection. However, the family retains the right to make claims for the return of still-missing looted cultural objects, estimated at 800 pieces. This means that cases involving the Czartoryski collection could arise in the future, whether in Poland or abroad.
The Future of Polish Restitution and its Effects in the U.S.
Warsaw Castle (photo courtesy of Claudia Quinones)
Poland has received criticism for lacking viable procedures to process restitution claims from Holocaust victims, within the country and from abroad. It has also failed to uphold the Washington Principles despite benefiting from restitution laws of other nations, including the U.S. This, combined with the new law’s restrictive statute of limitations, may prompt claimants to file lawsuits in more forgiving jurisdictions, such as the U.S. (however, jurisdictional challenges remain for claimants to prove proper jurisdiction within the U.S.). Restitutions of Nazi-looted art involving foreign claimants have become prominent in the U.S., including the well-known cases of the Altmann family’s claim to Klimt’s Lady in Gold and the ongoing Guelph Treasure litigation. The statute of limitations for theft in general may be tolled under the Demand and Refusal Rule or the Discovery Rule. The Demand and Refusal Rule, which only applies in New York, holds that the statute of limitations begins to run when the original owner demands restitution, and the current possessor refuses to return the object. The Discovery Rule deems that time begins to run when an owner knows or reasonably should know the location of the object.
At the federal level, U.S. Congress passed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (HEAR Act) providing a 6-year statute of limitations for Nazi looted cultural property that does not begin to run until the object in question is actually discovered and knowledge of it is obtained. This is more favorable for claimants, allowing them greater opportunity to make plans of action for restitution. Notably, the Act has the potential for cases that were previously barred under statute of limitations rules to be “resuscitated” in special circumstances. However, while the Act replaces state and federal statutes of limitations for art recovery claims with a uniform period to make a claim, this is only temporary (until 2026).
The HEAR Act also allows claimants to side-step the good faith purchaser loophole present in many countries, including Poland. The U.S. follows the nemo dat rule, holding that a thief cannot transfer good title to stolen property. This fault in title continues to taint subsequent purchasers. If claimants have a connection with the U.S., they may be able to file a suit for the restitution of looted cultural property there, even if the object is located in another state such as Poland. Likewise, Poland could appear in a U.S. court to request repatriation if there is sufficient nexus, or the nation may request assistance from U.S. authorities. For example, in 2014, the FBI was contacted by Poland and tracked down 75 paintings by a Polish resistance fighter who moved to San Francisco after escaping a concentration camp. Although Poland’s law may affect domestic claims, the door remains open for international cooperation, which may have a more favorable outcome.
The effects from the Polish law remain to be seen, but there is no stemming the tide of restitution for Nazi looted cultural heritage. Although countries have experienced setbacks with restitution claims, cultural heritage attorneys will continue to seek justice in the face of procedural and legal hurdles.
Our founder has been featured in the Art She Says summer 2021 French Riviera Issue. Her contribution to the magazine discusses art theft, forgeries, government ownership of cultural heritage, World War II restitution matters, and artists’ rights, with a particular focus on the firm’s work and her experience as an art lawyer. This includes our firm’s recent representation of the Italian and GreekMinistries of Culture in federal court. These were landmark cases, sending the message that foreign sovereigns can continue to monitor the art market without fearing lawsuits when making inquiries as to potentially looted antiquities’ whereabouts. The article also touches on the forfeiture of antiquities from Hobby Lobby, since Leila served as a cultural heritage consultant for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that matter, and another forfeiture case concerning a 13th century painting.
Leila’s contribution concludes with an overview of due diligence and intellectual property rights, which are crucial for private collectors, particularly with the vast number of forgeries and stolen works on the market. The magazine also includes photographs taken by Leila. We invite you to visit the Art She Says website and read the issue to discover more about Leila’s contribution, as well as the other interesting and valuable articles in the publication. Art She Says is the leading digital magazine that empowers women in the art world through the curation of luxury content, networking events, and art advisory services.
Virtual restoration of the Old Summer Palace during the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911. (Copyright: Asianewsphoto)
Over two thousand years ago, the Jade Emperor, Supreme God of the Heavens in Taoism mythology, launched what is now known as the Great Race. The invitation was extended to every animal species in the Empire but, because of prior engagements or travel restrictions, only twelve (the Pig, Rooster, Sheep, Horse, Dog, Monkey, Snake, Rabbit, Dragon, Tiger, Rat, and Ox) attended the event. In gratitude, the Jade Emperor promised each participant it would be attributed a zodiac year and two hours of the day. The first to reach the finish line would become the first zodiac sign and the first two hours of the day, and so on. The race crossed all terrains, with its climax being a river crossing. Rat, the group’s smallest member, feared for its life; until it spied Ox. The bovine was known to have poor vision so Rat offered to direct it through the river by riding on its back. Ox agreed and they began the final leg of the journey. Yet once the pair grew close to the opposite bank, Rat jumped off Ox’s head and won the race. To this day, Rat remains the first sign in the Chinese zodiac and it symbolizes hours 11:00pm to 1:00am.
Under the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, Emperor Qianlong commissioned the creation of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. Reigning over 715 acres of utopian hills and gardens, the palace hosted the empire’s formal and recreational stays. Within this land, hidden in the Garden of Eternal Spring, was the Haiyantang water-clock fountain. Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian painter, designed the fountain to include twelve bronze heads in the shapes of the zodiac animals, which sprouted water at the hours to which the creatures were assigned in the Great Race myth. Water speared out of Rat’s mouth at midnight and Rabbit rose with the sun from 5:00 to 7:00am.
In 1856, the British declared the Second Opium War against the Qing government. The French joined soon after. Four years into the war, British High Commissioner to China, James Bruce, the Eight Earl of Elgin entered the picture. The son of the Thomas Bruce (known for removing from marble frieze from the Parthenon), James Bruce ordered the burning and looting of the Old Summer Palace. Like his father, James has faced the ire of history due to his destruction and theft of a nation’s heritage. He knew that amongst the Chinese Palace’s treasures, the fountain’s bronze heads were no small catch. The French and British soldiers likely traded some of the loot amongst themselves. We now know most of the bronze heads were sent to Europe.
World-renowned French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé spent years acquiring an enviable art collection. From their first acquisition of a wooden bird sculpture, Oiseau Sénoufo, originating from Côte d’Ivoire in 1960, animals became a central theme in their collection. When Saint Laurent died in 2008, Bergé auctioned off a large part of their collection with Christie’s Paris the following year. Up for auction were the rat and rabbit heads. They may have gone unnoticed, but the Republic of China had had its eyes out for the bronzes for nearly a decade. Back in 2000 the tiger, the monkey, and the ox were the first zodiac heads to reappear on the public art market. At the time, they were featured in Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction catalogues for their upcoming sales. The Chinese State Bureau of Cultural Relics promptly wrote to the auction houses demanding the withdrawal of the bronze heads from the sales. The Chinese government did not formulate an official restitution request because international conventions were viewed as inapplicable to lootings that occurred over 140 years ago. As a result, the auction houses rejected the State’s request. In an unexpected turn of events, however, China Poly Group Corp. Ltd.placed its live bids on all three heads, and won them for a total of $4 million dollars. The sculptures were placed in this state-owned corporation’s Poly Art Museum in Beijing, which is dedicated to Chinese heritage. Three years later, the same museum acquired the pig head from Chinese billionaire Stanley Ho, who had bought it from a New York collector. Finally, in 2007, Ho purchased the horse head from Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $8.9 million dollars.
Jackie Chan wrote, directed, and starred in a film about the stolen zodiac bronzes.
It came as no surprise when Christie’s Paris received a letter from the Chinese government in February 2009 asking that the rat and rabbit heads be removed from the Yves Saint Laurent-Bergé sale. It was also to be expected that the auction house would refuse. In protest, the “Association pour la protection de l’art chinois en Europe” (the Foundation for the protection of Chinese art in Europe) along with eighty other Chinese lawyers, filed a complaint with the “juge des référés” whose role in France is to deliver temporary restraining orders in time-sensitive situations. Two days before auction, the tribunal rejected the foundation’s request to enjoin the sale.
THE PROVENANCE: In its press release on the three-day Saint Laurent estate sale, Christie’s described the zodiac bronze heads as the “two main pieces” amongst the works for sale. The sculptures’ provenance revealed that Saint Laurent had acquired them from the Kugel brothers at their famous Galerie Kugel in Paris. The Kugels bought the bronze heads from the marquis de Pomereu in 1986 who had attained them from the Spanish painter José María Sert.
On the closing day of the sale, February 25, 2009, the rat and rabbit bronzes sold for the equivalent of nearly $40 million. A few days later, the winning bidder refused to pay for them. Cai Mingchao, a self-described Chinese patriot, explained his act was a national duty. “This money,” he claimed, “should not be paid.” The Chinese government publicly supported Mingchao’s fraud and, in addition, placed tighter trade restrictions on Christie’s art trades, ordering local law enforcement officials to report any artifact that might have been looted and trafficked. Following Mingchao’s refusal to pay for the sculptures, Pierre Bergé eventually sold the lots to French billionaire François Pinault, the owner of Christie’s.
Rabbit bronze for auction at Christie’s (Copyright: Agence France-Presse)
However, the story was not over. In 2013, Pinault announced that the rat and rabbit heads would return to Beijing. But the animals’ race home came at a price. Curiously, this donation occurred only a few days after Christie’s was granted a license to conduct business on mainland China. Most recently, in December 2020, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration launched the return of the horse head. The Summer Palace was restored in 1886, twenty-six years after its destruction. However, the dragon, dog, sheep, snake, and rooster have yet to reach to finish line and return home.
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.
Earlier this year, the Museum of Pontevedra in Spain 
Our founder has been featured in the 
In 1856, the British declared the Second Opium War against the Qing government. The French joined soon after. Four years into the war, British High Commissioner to China, James Bruce, the Eight Earl of Elgin entered the picture. The son of the Thomas Bruce (known for removing from marble frieze from the Parthenon), James Bruce ordered the burning and looting of the Old Summer Palace. Like his father, James has faced the ire of history due to his destruction and theft of a nation’s heritage. He knew that amongst the Chinese Palace’s treasures, the fountain’s bronze heads were no small catch. The French and British soldiers likely traded some of the loot amongst themselves. We now know most of the bronze heads were sent to Europe.
