Recovered painting by Alessandro Turchi stolen from Jews in Nazi occupation

A seventeenth-century oil-on-canvas painting by Alessandro Turchi known as the Orbetto, but formerly attributed to Nicolas Poussin, has been recovered by Carabinieri from the Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale in Monza. It depicts Loth and his daughters as one of the latter, standing, serves them a drink. The work had been seized in 1944 during theGerman occupation from a Jewish family and has now been found in the home of a Milanese antiquarian in Padua, thanks to a complex investigation that began in May last year.

The rightful owners, an elderly woman over ninety years old from Switzerland and an almost seventy-year-old American man, heirs of the Jewish family to whom the work had been seized by the Nazis between February and August 1944 in Poitiers, reported the fact and the painting thus entered the database of works stolen during the Nazi occupation.

According to initial reports, as early as 1946 the painting’s owners had initiated a search for the painting, and the following year it was listed in the Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945. Investigations also revealed that in 2017 the painting came to Italy from France via an antiquarian from Emilia, and two years later a Milanese antiquarian, who owned the painting, had brought it to the Netherlands for the Maastricht International Fair. It was here that a Dutch art expert living in Italy had recognized it as one of the works featured in the publication.

The work was returned to its rightful owners at the order of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Milan.

Ph. Credit Ansa

Recovered painting by Alessandro Turchi stolen from Jews in Nazi occupation

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