Nazi-looted art to remain in California museum
According to court documents, the life-size paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder depicting Adam and Eve belonged to Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. After he fled the Netherlands in 1940, the paintings were taken by Nazi Reich Marshall Hermann Göring in a forced sale. The Dutch government subsequently sold the works to the Stroganoffs, a Russian family, who then sold them in 1971 to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, which has owned them ever since.
Goudstikker's daughter-in-law, Marei von Saher, has been locked in an 11-year legal battle with the museum to get the paintings back.
The judge's reasoning:
The case of the two 1.9-meter (6.25-foot) Cranach panels — valued at an estimated $24 million (€20 million) — hinged largely on whether the string of past sales could be seen as lawful. Circuit Judge Margaret McKeown upheld a 2016 court decision acknowledging that, under Dutch law, the Cranachs had been "enemy property" belonging to Göring. After the war that property was transferred to the Dutch government, which had the right to sell them in 1966 to George Stroganhoff-Scherbatoff, a descendant of the Russian aristocracy.
... ruling in von Saher's favor would have required nullifying three "official" Dutch government actions: the 1966 sale to Stroganoff; a 1999 decision not to restore von Saher's rights; and a 2006 decision that her claim had been "settled."
https://www.dw.com/en/nazi-looted-cranach-artworks-to-remain-in-california-museum/a-44895118
