Rendering №4

The title of the article is “Stuttgart museum returns looted medieval masterpiece”, it was published in the online version of "The Art Newspaper" on 05 March 2013.

I’d like to point out right at the beginning that “Virgin and Child”, a 15th-century painting attributed to the Master of Flémalle (1375-1444) was returned back to the estate of Max Stern, a German-born Jewish dealer who fled the Nazis and later operated the Dominion Gallery in Montreal.

The return of Virgin and Child marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Galerie Julius Stern in Düsseldorf and the tenth anniversary of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project at Concordia University in Montreal. In 1935 after Stern closed the business, 228 works from the gallery were auctioned at Mathias Lempertz in Cologne in 1937. Virgin and Child was sold with other works after Stern had fled to London. Then the painting came into the hands of the Frankfurt art dealer Alexander Haas, who sold it to a Dr Scheufelen in 1939. In 1948, 125 works from Scheufelen’s collection were willed to the museum. Tracing the picture’s provenance was complicated by the destruction of Stern’s business records when his London flat was bombed during the Blitz. The Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) of the New York State Department of Financial Services has supported the claim by researching the painting’s history and corresponding with the Staatsgalerie.

Before it is shipped to Canada, the painting will be studied by experts; researchers do not rule out a reattribution.

It only remains for me to say that this masterpiece has a great history, all in all, it is evident that nowadays people should try to keep it in safe. Nobody doubts that our heritage is art.