France hands back Nazi-looted art to Jewish family

France will return three paintings by the Flemish master Joachim Patinir today to the descendants of a Jewish family which was forced to sell them as they fled the Nazis.

The Bromberg family fled to Paris from Germany in late 1938 and was forced the following year to sell the 16th-century “Triptych of the Crucifixion” depicting Christ on the cross, along with several other paintings, so they could get to the United States via Switzerland.

The paintings are to be formally handed over to the descendants of Herta and Henry Bromberg at the Louvre Museum by French Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen.

It is the second time in two years that the French state has returned despoiled art to the family.

In 2016 it handed over another 16th-century painting, “Portrait of a Man,” by one of the followers of Antwerp artist Joos van Cleve.

The Patinir paintings had languished for nearly seven decades unclaimed in the French state collections after they were recovered in Munich after World War II.

The triptych had been bought at a knock-down price after the German occupation of Paris and was destined for Hitler’s Fuhrermuseum in his home town of Linz in Austria, where he wanted to build “the ideal museum.”

Patinir, regarded as the father of landscape painting, developed the panoramic style that became a hallmark of the northern Renaissance.

France has stepped up its efforts to returned art looted during World War II to its rightful owners, using genealogical experts to try and trace families.

— AFP