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This photograph shows the 18th-century painting titled “Landscape of Italian Character” by Viennese artist Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer, Thursday, Oct. 19 in Chicago. After disappearing nearly 80 years ago, the “Landscape of Italian Character,” a Baroque landscape portrait, returned to a representative of the German Museum in a brief rite at the German consulate in Chicago, where pastoral portraits of an Italian countryside were on display.
CHICAGO (AP) — After a nearly century-long layover in the United States, a painting of a Baroque landscape that disappeared during World War II was returned to Germany on Thursday.
The FBI handed over the paintings by 18th-century Austrian artist Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer to a representative of the German museum in a brief rite at the German consulate in Chicago, where pastoral paintings depicting an Italian countryside are on display.
Art Recovery International, a company dedicated to locating and recovering stolen and looted artwork, tracked down the elusive painting after Chicago contacted him last year, claiming to possess a “stolen or looted painting” that his uncle brought to the United States after serving. during World War II.
The painting has been missing since 1945 and was first reported stolen from the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, Germany. It was added to the database of the German Foundation for Lost Art in 2012, according to a report by the art recovery company.
“The core of our painting at Art Recovery International is the study and restitution of art paintings looted by the Nazis and found in public or personal collections. Sometimes we come across cases, like this one, where Allied infantrymen took pieces from home as souvenirs. or war trophies,” said Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International.
“Being on the winning side doesn’t mean things are going well,” he added.
The identity of the Chicago resident who owns the painting has been shared. The user first asked Marinello to be paid for the artwork.
“I explained to him our policy of not paying for stolen art and that the request was inappropriate,” Marinello said.
“We also know that he tried to sell the painting at the Chicago Art Market in 2011 and disappeared when the museum filed its claim. “
But with the FBI’s Art Crimes team, lawyers and the museum, Marinello negotiated the unconditional return of the artwork.
The painting, titled “Landscape of Italian Character,” will now be reunited with its counterpart, which features motifs and images, according to the museum.
The combination of the two paintings forms a panoramic scene showing shepherds and travelers with their goats, cows, donkeys, and sheep at the ford of a river.
The two men will soon demonstrate together for the first time since World War II at Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, according to Bernd Ebert, senior curator at the Museum of Dutch and German Baroque Painting.
Retrieving a long-lost portrait “is a very rare moment for us,” Ebert said. “It’s exciting. “
The Viennese artist Lauterer lived between 1700 and 1733.
When war broke out in 1939, many Bavarian museum collections were evacuated to locations in the region, but Lauterer’s portrait has been missing since the war began, suggesting the option that it may have been looted, according to the museum.
Bavarian state painting collections began searching for the painting between 1965 and 1973, but no clues to its location were revealed until decades later.
Ebert, who flew from Munich to Chicago to retrieve the painting, will wrap the centuries-old landscape in bubble wrap to take home, where it will be retouched and restored after several turbulent decades.
Luckily, Ebert says, he has compatibility in his suitcase.
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