Italian authorities have recovered three 15th-century paintings looted by Nazi troops from a Tuscan villa during the Second World War. The works—a Madonna with Child attributed to Cima da Conegliano, the Trinity by Alessio Baldovinetti and the Presentation of Jesus to the Temple by Girolamo dai Libri—were unveiled on 18 April at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, where they have been temporarily assigned for safekeeping.
In 1939, a year after Italy introduced its anti-Jewish racial laws, the Fascist government under Benito Mussolini created an agency to acquire, manage and resell property confiscated from the Jews. Its remit was extended to enemy citizens after Italy entered the Second World War in alliance with Nazi Germany in 1940. Known as EGELI, the organisation took possession of the assets of prince Félix of Bourbon-Parma, the grand duke of Luxembourg, in August that year. Among them were the paintings from the prince’s art collection at Villa delle Pianore in Camaiore, Tuscany.
Occupying German troops seized the works in 1944, transporting them to Dornsberg castle, the South Tyrol headquarters of Karl Wolff, the SS commander who negotiated the Nazi surrender in Italy in 1945. At the end of the war, US soldiers from the so-called “Monuments Men” raided the castle. A number of works from the Bourbon-Parma collection were returned to the family in 1949, but the three paintings remained missing.
Following what it described as a “complex investigation” based on archival documents, a branch of the Carabinieri art crime unit in Monza, northern Italy, traced the works to the descendants of two Milanese collectors in December 2014. The paintings are in state custody but will be stored at the Pinacoteca di Brera while authorities decide whether to restitute them to Luxembourg, La Stampa reports.
