ICE and DOJ return Christopher Columbus letter to Spain
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-and-doj-return-christopher-columbus-letter-spain
ICE and DOJ return Christopher Columbus letter to Spain
WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) returned a more than 500-year-old copy of Christopher Columbus’ letter describing his discoveries in the Americas to Spain during an evening repatriation ceremony at the Residence of the Spanish Ambassador to the United States. The letter, originally written in 1493, was stolen from the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona and sold for approximately $1 million.
“I am pleased to be able to return a priceless piece of cultural property to its rightful owners,” said HSI Acting Deputy Executive Associate Director Alysa D. Erichs. “I would like to thank Ambassador Morenés for his hospitality in hosting us tonight, HSI Wilmington, Madrid, Brasilia, and Paris for their excellent work on this investigation, as well as the tremendous assistance by our partners at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Delaware, without whom today’s repatriation would not be possible,” Erichs added.
The return of the letter was the culmination of a seven-year investigation jointly conducted by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware. It began in 2011 when HSI Wilmington (Del.) and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office received a tip that several 15th century original manually printed copies of the Columbus Letter were stolen from European libraries and replaced with forgeries without the knowledge of library officials or local law enforcement. The investigation determined that the stolen Columbus Letter from Spain was sold in November 2005 for 600,000 Euros by two Italian book dealers.
“This evening ceremony is a showcase of the ties that bind the United States and Spain together,” said Ambassador of Spain to the United States Pedro Morenés. “The cooperation between Homeland Security Investigations and special units of the Guardia Civil has born great fruit in ensuring the return of stolen cultural property to Spain,” Ambassador Morenes added.
In June 2012, a subject matter expert, accompanied by an HSI Wilmington Special Agent, visited the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona and reviewed the Columbus Letter in the possession of the library at which time it was determined, in coordination with Spanish authorities and with support from HSI Madrid that the letter at the library was a forgery.
In March 2013, it was discovered that the Columbus Letter believed to have been stolen from Barcelona was reportedly sold for 900,000 euros in June 2011. Following extensive negotiations with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, the individual in possession of the letter volunteered to transfer custody to HSI Special Agents, which was then brought to Wilmington, Delaware in February 2014 for further examination. In March 2014, a subject matter expert evaluated the letter and determined that the document was “beyond all doubt” the original stolen from the National Library of Catalonia. Additionally, other experts conducted a series of non-invasive digital imaging tests, which determined, among other things, the probable use of a chemical agent to bleach the ink of National Library of Catalonia’s stamp and that the paper fibers of the Catalonia Plannck II Columbus Letter had been disturbed from their original state where the stamps were previously located.
U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss stated, “The recovery of this Plannck II Columbus Letter on behalf of the Spanish government exemplifies not only the significance of federal agency partnerships in these complicated investigations but the close coordination that exists between American and foreign law enforcement agencies. We are truly honored to return this historically important document back to Spain – its rightful owner. I commend the dogged efforts of HSI special agents and Department of Justice attorneys who are dedicated to the recovery of stolen cultural artifacts from around the world.”
Today’s repatriation marks the second return of a Columbus letter by ICE, the most recent until now taking place in May 2016.
ICE has returned over 11,000 artifacts to over 30 countries since 2007, including paintings from France, Germany, Poland and Austria, 15th-18th century manuscripts from Italy and Peru, cultural artifacts from China, Cambodia, and two Baatar dinosaur fossils to Mongolia, ancient artifacts including a mummy’s hand to Egypt, royal seals valued at $1,500,000 to the Republic of Korea, and most recently, thousands of ancient artifacts to Iraq.
Learn more about ICE’s cultural property, art and antiquities investigations. Members of the public who have information about suspected stolen cultural property are urged to call the toll-free tip line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE or to complete the online tip form.
Scans reveal newsprint, second painting under Picasso
https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/scans-reveal-newsprint-second-painting-under-picasso-1.3961269
Scans reveal newsprint, second painting under Picasso
Infrared imaging technology has helped peel back the layers of a Pablo Picasso painting on display in Japan, and revealed a page from a 1902 newspaper and another composition below.
U.S. and Japanese researchers scanned the piece “Mother and Child by the Sea”, owned by the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, west of Tokyo, and uncovered a page of the French newspaper Le Journal from January 18, 1902.
“While the reason for the presence of newsprint in the paint layers is a mystery, the discovery is significant for Picasso scholars due to the proximity of the date to the artist’s move from Paris to Barcelona,” said the Washington-based National Gallery of Art, whose researcher John Delaney led the project in Japan.
Picasso is thought to have moved to the Spanish city in early January 1902, bringing a few canvasses with him, and the newspaper article revealed in the painting suggests the work was completed some time after his move.
The scan also provided clear images of an underlying painting of a woman sitting down next to an absinthe glass with a spoon in it.
Picasso frequently reused canvasses or incorporated previous sketches into a final work.
However, it was not immediately clear why the artist used a page from Le Journal, which he was known to have read frequently.
“It may have been used… to cover previous layers before he painted another layer or the final composition of the mother and child,” scientists said.
The section of newsprint brought readers news of parliamentary clashes in London and the creation of a new annual exhibition of painting and sculpture at the Automobile Club of France, a gentleman’s club in Paris.
German museum and auctioneer Im Kinsky tussle over looted glass goblet
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/museum-auctioneer-tussle-over-looted-goblet
German museum and auctioneer Im Kinsky tussle over looted glass goblet
Object was returned to consigner not museum from where it was looted at the end of Second World War
CATHERINE HICKLEY – June 6, 2018
A multicoloured marbled glass goblet dating from around 1800, which was stolen at the end of the Second World War, is the subject of a dispute between the Vienna auction house Im Kinsky and Berlin’s Märkisches Museum.
The museum bought the goblet at auction in 1890 along with eight similar glass objects, all of which were looted in the chaos at the end of the war. Little was known about the goblet’s history until it was offered for sale at the Glasgalerie Michael Kovacek in 1990, according to Im Kinsky’s lawyer Ernst Ploil, on consignment for a German seller. The museum tried to recover the glass at that time, but Kovacek failed to stop the sale.
The goblet surfaced again this year at Im Kinsky in Vienna, where Kovacek and Ploil are managing partners. In the catalogue for the auction on 25 April, the provenance history included the brief description “Museum Berlin”.
At the request of Ulf Bischof, the Berlin lawyer representing the Märkisches Museum, Im Kinsky withdrew the goblet from the auction and returned it to the consignor. The museum then offered to pay a “finder’s reward” of €5,000 to avoid a legal battle but the consignor rejected the offer, saying he had another potential buyer who was offering €48,000.
“Our client is deeply concerned by this behaviour,” Bischof says. “It is unprecedented that an auction house knowingly accepts a stolen museum work on consignment and uses a cryptic ‘Museum Berlin’ provenance for advertising.
“Collectors as well as the museum community should be alerted to such questionable business practice.”
Bischof says the goblet was produced at Zechlinerhütte, a former glass-making centre in Rheinsberg, north of Berlin.
It is not known exactly how it came to be lost in the Second World War, but many Berlin museums stored their collections in bunkers and other bomb-proof locations to protect them from air raids. Some of these stored treasures were plundered by the Red Army; others were looted by ordinary German citizens.
Ploil argues that statutes of limitations would hinder any efforts by the museum to pursue its claim in court and that the previous buyers bought the goblet in good faith, thereby obtaining legal title.
“The fact that the goblet was previously in the museum was known, but no one knew it was stolen,” Ploil says. “Any restitution claim for this has expired.”
Bischof says that the Märkisches Museum still holds legal title. He insists that whoever buys it now cannot claim a good-faith purchase because the seller is aware of its tainted past. Any attempt to sell the goblet without informing the buyer in full of the ownership claim may be liable for fraud, he says.
Bischof also argues that even though the theft itself is time-barred under statutes of limitation, laws against concealing stolen goods are still applicable. He has informed Austrian law enforcers.
Court upholds Italian art dealer’s conviction over rare church murals
Court upholds Italian art dealer’s conviction over rare church murals
Gianfranco Becchina, who is now 80 years old, was not present at Friday’s hearing in Athens, but his lawyer told the court that her client, being an expert in antiquities, was unaware of the murals’ importance and had no role in their theft. Judges rejected the appeal, upholding a conviction against Becchina on charges of receiving stolen goods.
The case dates to 1978, when a known thief from Pyrgos in the northwestern Peloponnese broke into the Church of Palaiopanaghias and chiseled off four 16th century paintings of the saints Ermolaos, Nikitas, Makarios of Egypt and Nestor, causing extensive damage to the interior of the listed monument. The man was sentenced to life in prison in 1984 over a string of unrelated thefts, but the four murals remained missing for years until they were discovered in 2001 during an investigation into a gallery in Basel, Switzerland, run by Becchina and his wife, Ursula Juraschek.
There, Swiss authorities discovered a trove of stolen Italian antiquities, as well as the four Greek paintings that are believed to belong to the so-called School of Thebes movement.
The paintings were repatriated to Greece in 2010 and are now on display the Byzantine Museum in Athens. Their total value has been estimated in the range of 160,000 euros.
Court dismisses claim that Norval Morrisseau painting is fake
Court dismisses claim that Norval Morrisseau painting is fake
Court heard testimony about a Thunder Bay-area fraud ring
TORONTO — In a case that has been watched closely by the art world, a Superior Court justice has ruled that, “from the law’s point of view,” a painting sold by an Ontario art gallery to Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is “a real Norval Morrisseau painting.”
The judge also found that the evidence he heard did not “in any conclusive way” connect Spirit Energy of Mother Earth to an alleged fraud ring in the Thunder Bay area that produced Morrisseau fakes.
“Counsel for Hearn went to considerable effort in gathering evidence and calling witnesses to establish that a group of fraudsters worked for a number of years in northwest Ontario, and that as a consequence of their prolific activities a substantial number of Morrisseau forgeries exist,” Justice E.M. Morgan noted in his Reasons for Judgment, issued last month.
He noted, however, that “no witness identified this particular painting as having been produced by a member of the northern Ontario-based criminal enterprise.”
Hearn, keyboardist with the Barenaked Ladies band, sued Toronto’s Maslak-McLeod Gallery, alleging the work he bought in 2005 was counterfeit.
During the civil trial that concluded in February, the court heard from an art expert who has studied Morrisseau’s work extensively. She concluded the piece was an imitation as it contained numerous elements that were different from Morrisseau’s standard approaches.
However, an expert in handwriting analysis testified that, with “reasonable certainty,” he believed Morrisseau’s signature on the painting was authentic.
In his written Reasons for Judgment, issued on May 24, Justice Morgan noted how some of the testimony illustrated “the most fundamental problem in attempting to authenticate a purported Norval Morrisseau painting: there is more than one Morrisseau, or more than one Morrisseau style, that can emerge or submerge at any time.”
The judge said Spirit Energy of Mother Earth—is one more painting “that is possibly an authentic Norval Morrisseau and possibly not. As a matter of law, what is important is that a tie goes to the Defendants. Where a court is left in doubt because the relevant burden of proof has not been satisfied, the ‘fact’ sought to be proved is in law not true.”
Morrissesau, born in 1932 on the Sand Point Reserve near Beardmore, is credited with originating the Woodland School of Indigenous art.
He died in 2007.
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