In 2006, author Robert Edsel discovered something alarming about two paintings hanging in his local Dallas museum. They appeared to be stolen.
While conducting research for his book “Rescuing Da Vinci,” Edsel had come across an archival photo of one of the paintings, “Saint Justa” — a 1665 masterpiece by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo — sitting in a house in Buxheim, Germany, along with other treasures looted by the Nazis. Now, here it was hanging in Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum. As was the “Saint Justa’s” companion painting, “Saint Rufina,” which had illegally fallen into German hands during the war as well.
Officials, surprised to learn of the paintings’ potentially shady past, granted Edsel a private viewing.
Flipping over “Saint Justa,” he discovered a smoking gun of sorts — a long-faded, barely legible code written on the frame by the Germans to catalog what they’d looted. The notation read “R1171,” signifying that this was the 1,171st object taken from the Rothschilds, a wealthy Parisian banking family from whom more than 6,000 valuable pieces were confiscated.
“It was a pretty astonishing moment,” Edsel says.
In the end, the Murillo works may turn out to have been acquired legally. The paintings, which the museum acquired as gifts in 1972, could have been returned to the Rothschilds after the war and then subsequently sold legally by the family. Documentation showing the exact chain of events, however, is missing, leaving the true ownership of the paintings in doubt.
Even though World War II has long since ended, one battle continues to this day: the fight to find and repatriate stolen art. Hundreds of thousands of works remain missing, and there are people actively looking for them, all these years later.
The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, colloquially known as the Monuments Men, was created in 1943 to help protect Europe’s cultural bounty during the war. The Allied group was a mix of soldiers and commissioned scholars, including museum directors, art historians and architects, who risked life and limb to find and return priceless treasures to their rightful owners.
Their story is the basis for “The Monuments Men,” directed by George Clooney and opening Friday. Clooney, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban and John Goodman star as the art hunters.
The Nazis looted millions of objects from museums and homes across Europe, often hiding the booty in country estates or deep in salt mines to protect them from bombs. Hitler planned to build a grand museum in Linz that would display the plunder.
Before they wrapped up in 1951, the Monuments Men oversaw the return of some 5 million stolen objects to their rightful owners. Many more, however, vanished, presumably making their way home with soldiers or being sold illegally.
As a tribute to the real-life soldiers and in order to continue their work, Edsel founded the Monuments Men Foundation in 2007. The not-for-profit group continues to search for lost works and to educate the public.
“This is about banging the pots and pans to alert people to be looking in their attics and basements,” Edsel says. “These things might have come home with a soldier, sometimes innocently enough.”
Last year, Edsel helped recover eight 400-year-old books that had been taken from a Naples library. An American soldier had picked them up as souvenirs and always felt bad about it, so he attempted to give them back.
“He died about two weeks after that,” Edsel says. “It was like he lived long enough to see them returned.”
More stuff is definitely out there. In a February 2012 bust unrelated to the Monuments Men, German customs officers stumbled upon a massive stash of some 1,400 works of art, including paintings stolen by the Nazis, hidden in a Munich apartment.
Ready to join the hunt? We asked Edsel for his top 5 most wanted missing works of art. Could one be hanging on your — or your grandparents’ — wall?
“Portrait of a Young Man” by Raphael
Belongs to: The Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland
Last seen: The painting —a replica of which makes a brief appearance in the movie — was confiscated by the Nazis in September 1939 and moved in January 1945 to Polish Governor-General Hans Frank’s German chalet. Frank was arrested by Allied forces in May 1945 and found to be in possession of several cultural objects, including “Lady With an Ermine” by Leonardo da Vinci. The Raphael painting, however, had mysteriously vanished.
Presumed whereabouts: “There’s a lot of speculation that Frank’s wife sold it, knowing they’d need some cash,” Edsel says. “This wasn’t in an area of combat, so it wasn’t destroyed. It’s out there.”
The work is a wooden panel, not a canvas, making it difficult to hide.
“Maybe someone has it and knows exactly what it is. It may be in a vault somewhere,” Edsel says. “I’m working on a couple of things [with this one, but] it would be premature to speculate.”
“Portrait of a Young Man” by Hans Memling
Belongs to: Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
Last seen: The painting (along with some 800 other masterpieces) was stolen by Germany’s 305th Infantry in August 1944, and loaded onto a truck headed to northern Italy for “safe keeping.” It disappeared.
Presumed whereabouts: In 1963, two paintings by Renaissance artist Antonio del Pollaiolo, plundered from the Uffizi at the same time as the Memling, were found in the possession of a German waiter in California.
“The picture was small enough [14-by-10 inches] for someone to put it under their jacket,” Edsel says. “Whether they have it in hiding, whether it’s been sold, I don’t know. This could show up at a flea market or at auction.”
“The Painter on His Way to Work” by Vincent van Gogh
Belongs to: Kulturhistorisches Museum, Magdeburg, Germany
Last seen: The canvas was stashed in a salt-mine repository near Magdeburg by the Germans. It hasn’t been seen since.
Presumed whereabouts: Many think the art was destroyed in a fire that swept through the salt mine on April 12, 1945. Edsel isn’t so sure.
“There was a work of art belonging to the museum that surfaced in the last few years in the US, with someone that bought it or inherited it from a veteran,” he says. “If one painting survived, there’s no reason to think others didn’t.”
“Portrait of a Young Woman” by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Belongs to: The Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany
Last seen: The portrait was stashed inside the Berlin-Friedrichshain flak tower repository in early May 1945. The reinforced-concrete anti-aircraft structures provided good protection for artwork.
After the Soviets took Berlin, personnel were ostensibly keeping an eye on the works stored in the flak tower, though with hundreds of soldiers and refugees coming and going, it proved difficult to keep a tight watch.
In early May, there was a small fire at the tower, followed by a much larger one a few days later. All of the art inside was believed destroyed.
Presumed whereabouts: The Caravaggio was assumed to be extinct — that is until 2011, when a small painting that had been housed in the tower turned up for auction in New York.
“It was in the possession of a man whose dad was stationed in Berlin during the war,” Edsel says. “He supposedly bought it from a street vendor or a Russian soldier. If one picture made it out [safely], who is anyone to say that it was the only one out of hundreds?”
“Vase of Flowers” by Jan van Huysum
Belongs to: Palatine Gallery, Pitti Palace, Florence, Italy
Last seen: It was being stored at a hillside villa in Montagnana, Italy, in 1944 after being stolen by German soldiers.
Presumed whereabouts: “The painting is in the possession of a [known] collector in Switzerland or Germany,” Edsel says. “He has it, he knows he has it, he knows it was stolen, but he doesn’t want to give it back.”
The authorities might have a hard time recovering the work of art. European countries often set a time limit for recovering stolen property. In Germany, the statute of limitations is 30 years, Edsel says, meaning the collector who’s holding this van Huysum work can’t be legally compelled to give it back.