In the latest chapter of a family saga that has spanned a half century and included a legal victory over the formidable Louvre museum in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago has announced the settlement of a claim to one of its sculptures by heirs of a prominent Jewish art collector in France whose holdings were auctioned by the French government during World War II.
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The piece in question is a richly detailed sculpture titled “Bust of a Youth,” by the 17th Century Italian artist Francesco Mochi. Formerly attributed to the leading sculptor of the Baroque period, Gianlorenzo Bernini, the sculpture was among a group of artworks auctioned in 1941 during the German occupation of France.
Monday’s settlement marks the third time that the Art Institute has played a significant role in negotiations involving disputes over artworks from the Holocaust era.
The work–thought to depict the young John the Baptist–was owned by Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, a representative of the Italian Ministry of Finance living in France, who died of natural causes early in World War II. The bust was acquired by the Art Institute in 1989 as a significant addition to the museum’s sculpture collection.
The settlement in Chicago is a departure from other cases worldwide involving the disposition of artworks during the Holocaust era. The Mochi sculpture was not confiscated by the Nazis, as were most pieces now disputed by museums and heirs of the works’ former owners. But the resolution grows out of the heightened sensitivity to the wartime fate of artworks belonging to Jewish collectors that has prompted museums to research more intensively the ownership history of their holdings.
When the Nazis defeated France shortly after di Giuseppe’s death, his heirs fled the country, seeking safety in Canada and the United States. In their absence, French officials auctioned 155 works from his collection in 1941 to pay his estate’s outstanding debts. The heirs had long contended that the auction was illegal, insofar as they could not represent the family’s interests during the Nazi occupation of the country. They also claimed other assets for payment of the debt were available.
It is the third time in recent years that di Giuseppe’s heirs have recovered works from a major museum. In 1999, a French court awarded the heirs five paintings that had been in the Louvre. A painting by Giambattista Tiepolo also was returned to the family by the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin.
The works from the Louvre–including canvases by Tiepolo, Bernardo Strozzi and Alessandro Magnasco–were sold by the family last January through Christie’s auction house in New York. Four of the five pieces sold for $3.7 million, the Tiepolo alone fetching $2.2 million.
As is customary in such cases, the amount of the settlement with the Art Institute was not disclosed; the family also was granted anonymity. Under the terms of the settlement, characterized as a “purchase and donation agreement,” the museum will retain the work. “The memory of Mr. Gentili di Giuseppe’s prior ownership of the Mochi bust will be acknowledged by the Art Institute in connection with its display,” said institute director of public affairs Eileen Harakal.
“I think that generally speaking, it is one of our more important recent acquisitions in sculpture,” said Ian Wardropper, institute curator of decorative arts and sculpture, and Classical art. “Mochi’s star has risen in the reappraisal of the Baroque movement; he is now given credit as one of its founders.”
Art historian Howard Hibbard has written: “Mochi had been the first to break with the formulas that stultified late 16th Century Roman sculpture . . . . He is one of the real heroes of early 17th Century art.”
Since the 1950s, di Giuseppe’s heirs have tried to regain works sold at the 1941 auction. But a representative of the family said they were only recently able to establish their claims, in the wake of a new international effort to make reparations to Jews and their descendants whose property was illegally seized during the Holocaust.
The Art Institute has become the leader among American museums in trying to identify works of art whose histories have gaps in ownership information from 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, until 1946. The institute has successfully resolved more disputes than any other art museum in the United States.
A family spokesman told the Tribune, “The heirs consider that the Art Institute exhibited an exemplary attitude during negotiations over the Mochi.”
During those negotiations, institute director James N. Wood went to Paris to meet with a di Giuseppe family member.
The family spokesman also noted that the pattern of good faith established during this case has guided the family in its ongoing attempts to recover lost artworks in two other American museums.
The Art Institute also owns two paintings by the 18th Century Italian artist Antonio Canaletto that were previously owned by di Giuseppe. Both the heirs and the institute agree those works had been legally sold from the family collection, and the heirs said no claim for them will be made.
In 1998, the institute participated in the settlement of a dispute over a Degas pastel monotype owned by museum trustee Daniel Searle and claimed by the heirs of Fritz Gutmann, a Jewish collector who perished in the Holocaust. Anticipating Monday’s settlement, the institute agreed to recognize the Degas as having belonged to both the Gutmann family and Searle. A dispute involving a painting by Gustave Courbet is still in negotiations between the institute and heirs of Max Silberberg, a Jewish collector who died in the Holocaust.
In the di Giuseppe case, his daughter attempted in 1950 to recover the works from his collection that hung in the Louvre. One–Tiepolo’s “Alexander and Campaspe Visiting Appelle”–earlier had found its way into the private collection of Nazi leader Hermann Goering, who had a taste for Old Masters. At the war’s end, that work was recovered by the U.S. Army, which returned it to French authorities, according to the American policy of art restitution.
Di Giuseppe’s daughter tried in vain to regain the work. In the aftermath of World War II, French courts did not want to reopen questions about the country’s role during the war, noted Hector Feliciano, author of “The Lost Museum,” which traced the fate of Jewish art collections during the Holocaust.
“The di Giuseppe family was victimized by a creditor who took advantage of France’s anti-Jewish laws,” Feliciano said. “But in recent years, there has been a sea change in the climate in the country.”
After current French President Jacques Chirac called upon citizens to acknowledge anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy government, the way was opened for restitution. Di Giuseppe’s heirs returned to court, armed with the information that a friend of the auctioneer had bought paintings at the 1941 sale, making the transaction questionable. After the Louvre returned works from di Giuseppe’s collection, heirs were encouraged to approach other museums. Meanwhile, an art expert working for the family tracked the Mochi sculpture to the Art Institute of Chicago.
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When heirs contacted the institute, officials decided to avoid any possible legal dispute. Even the French family recognized that the museum had bought the work in good faith from the reputable London dealer of European sculpture Anthony Roth. Because the marble bust had been sold at the same 1941 auction as the Louvre’s paintings, the museum honored the family’s claim, officials said.