FBI RETURNS NAZI-LOOTED PAINTING TO MAX STERN HEIRS

The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has returned the seventeenth-century painting Young Man as Bacchus by Jan Franse Verzijl to representatives of the Max and Iris Stern Foundation, AFP reports. It is the sixteenth painting to be returned to the beneficiaries of Max Stern, a German-Jewish gallerist who was forced to sell his art collection to the Nazis.

The Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) of the New York State Department of Financial Services contacted the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York after learning, through an anonymous tip, that the canvas was on view at the 2015 Spring Masters Fair, consigned by Galleria Luigi Caretto. The FBI seized the painting at the fair and began negotiations with the gallery, which voluntarily waived its claim of ownership to the work.

FBI special agent in charge Michael McGarrity said, “Works of art hold a special place in our society. Likewise, facilitating the return of stolen and missing works of art to their rightful owners is held in high regard among art crime investigators at the FBI. Today, we are proud to return the Verzijl painting Young Man as Bacchus to representatives of the Stern Foundation after more than eighty years.”

In 2007, a US federal court ruled that all of the paintings Stern was forced to liquidate are considered stolen property. The judgment allowed the restitution of Franz-Xaver Winterhalter’s Girl from the Sabine Mountains, which Stern sold under duress in 1937.