Amsterdam
The Dutch advisory committee on the assessment of restitution applications has rejected a claim for Annunciation, two sculptures by the 15th-century German artist Tilman Riemenschneider in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
The alabaster statues were once owned by the German-Jewish banker Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, who sold his collection, under duress from the Nazis, to the city of Frankfurt in 1938. His heirs subsequently sought restitution of the pieces, making their claim in 2007. But the sculptures will remain in the Rijksmuseum’s collection. “The research by the Restitutions Committee revealed that Von Goldschmidt-Rothschild had already traded the two sculptures with the Jewish banker and art collector Fritz Mannheimer of Amsterdam at an earlier date between 1934 and 1936,” says a statement from the committee. “The committee did not find any evidence to suggest that this transaction was involuntary.”
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Heirs’ Nazi loot claim rejected'
