# Adam and Eve > Lucas Cranach the Elder - c. 1530 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/lucas-cranach-the-elder/cranach-adam-and-eve-norton-simon/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-10 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Lucas Cranach the Elder - **Date:** c. 1530 - **Medium:** Oil on panel - **Dimensions:** Each panel 190.5 x 69.9 cm - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** German, sixteenth century - **Current location:** Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California. Owned by the Norton Simon Art Foundation. Title is settled: the claim against the museum was dismissed and certiorari denied in 2019. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary Two life-size panels of about 1530, bought by the Amsterdam dealer Jacques Goudstikker from the Soviet Union at a Berlin auction in 1931, taken from his firm in a forced sale to Hermann Goering after Goudstikker died fleeing the invasion, recovered by the Allies, handed to the Dutch government in 1946, sold by the Dutch government in 1966 to a man who claimed his own family had owned them, and sold on by him to Norton Simon in 1971 for eight hundred thousand dollars.In 2006 the Netherlands returned 202 works from the same forced sale to Goudstikker's heir. It did not return these, because it no longer had them. Twelve years of litigation in the American courts ended on 30 July 2018 with the Ninth Circuit holding that to give them back it would have to declare three official acts of the Dutch government invalid, which the act of state doctrine forbids. The Supreme Court declined the case in 2019. The museum keeps the panels. The forced sale is not in dispute and never was. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1530** Lucas Cranach the Elder, Wittenberg `[documented]` (origin) Painted about 1530 as a pair, one figure to each panel. - **-1931** Unknown; possibly the Stroganoff family, then the Soviet state `[unknown]` (gap) Four centuries are unaccounted for. The panels were sold by the Soviet Union in 1931 at a Berlin auction billed as the Stroganoff Collection. Whether the Stroganoffs ever owned them is contested: the district court found they never did, the museum disputed that, and the Court of Appeals declined to resolve it. - **1931-1940** Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker NV, Amsterdam `[documented]` (purchase) Bought by Jacques Goudstikker at the 1931 Berlin sale and held by the dealership in which he was principal shareholder. Listed in the black notebook of gallery stock that he carried out of the Netherlands in May 1940. - **1940-1945** Hermann Goering `[documented]` (forced sale) Taken with other artworks for two million guilders under involuntary written agreements concluded with a remaining employee of the firm after Goudstikker's death on 16 May 1940. The forced character of the transaction is uncontested by all parties to the later litigation, including the museum. A separate forced transaction transferred the firm itself, its premises, some paintings and the family's houses to the banker Alois Miedl for 550,000 guilders. - **1946-1966** The Dutch State `[documented]` (recovery and state ownership) Recovered by Allied forces in Germany and handed to the Dutch government in 1946. The Goudstikker firm filed under Royal Decree E100 for the Miedl transaction only, settling with the state in August 1952, and in 1949 its lawyer wrote expressly waiving the right to file for restoration of rights on the works Goering had acquired. No E100 annulment of the Goering transaction was ever obtained. - **1966-1971** George Stroganoff-Sherbatoff `[documented]` (settlement of a competing claim) Stroganoff petitioned the Dutch government in the 1960s asserting that the Soviet state had stolen the panels from his family. In 1966 he bought them from the Netherlands in exchange for dropping his restitution claims. The Ninth Circuit held in 2018 that this conveyance was an official act of the Dutch state, made through its own restitution process and not a one-off commercial sale. - **1971-present** Norton Simon Art Foundation and Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena `[documented]` (purchase) Bought from Stroganoff through his agent in 1971 for USD 800,000 and on continuous public display since. Title confirmed by summary judgment, affirmed by the Ninth Circuit on 30 July 2018 on the act of state doctrine, with certiorari denied on 20 May 2019. The claim by Marei von Saher, sole surviving heir of Jacques and Desi Goudstikker, was brought in 2007 and finally rejected without any finding that the 1940 taking was lawful. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - These panels have not been offered at public auction since 1931 and are not for sale. The only figures in the record are the 1931 Berlin sale, for which no price was found; the two million guilders paid across the whole Goering transaction in 1940, which the Ninth Circuit put at over twenty million dollars in current money and which covered many works, not only these two; and the USD 800,000 the Norton Simon Art Foundation paid Stroganoff in 1971. None of the three is a hammer price for this pair and none should be treated as a valuation of it. ## Exhibitions - Permanent display, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 1971-present ## Open questions - Did the Stroganoff family ever own these panels? The district court found they never did; the museum contested it; the Ninth Circuit called the record muddied and declined to decide. The finding matters, because a colourable Stroganoff claim is what made the 1966 Dutch conveyance a sovereign restitution act rather than an ordinary sale. - Which Berlin auction house sold the panels for the Soviet Union in 1931? The Ninth Circuit records only that the sale was billed as the Stroganoff Collection. - Why does Eve carry the accession number M.1991.1.P when both panels were bought in one transaction in 1971? No published explanation was found. - Was the 1952 settlement between the Goudstikker firm and the Dutch state a release of the Goering claims as well as the Miedl claims? The parties disputed it, the district court made no finding, and the Ninth Circuit held the answer did not affect the outcome. It remains open. - Is the Cranach Adam recorded under inventory NK 1693 in the Netherlands Art Property Collection one of these two panels? Aggregated records attach that number to them, and the Allies did return the panels to the Dutch state in 1946, but the identification was not confirmed against a Dutch primary record for this entry. - What are the panels insured for, and what has the museum ever published about their value? Nothing beyond the 1971 purchase price of USD 800,000 was found. ## Sources - [1] Marei von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena and Norton Simon Art Foundation, No. 16-56308, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, argued 14 February 2018, filed 30 July 2018, opinion by McKeown J., Wardlaw J. concurring. Full text, containing the 1931 Berlin purchase, the Goudstikker flight and death, the Miedl and Goering transactions and their sums, Royal Decrees A6, E100 and E133, the 1949 waiver letter, the 1952 settlement, the 1966 Stroganoff conveyance, the 1971 sale at USD 800,000, the 1999 Dutch appellate refusal, the 2001 policy change, the 2006 return excluding these panels, and the whole litigation history including Von Saher I (592 F.3d 954, 9th Cir. 2010) and Von Saher II (754 F.3d 712, 9th Cir. 2014). PRIMARY. - [2] Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, certiorari denied 20 May 2019, 139 S. Ct. 2616, 204 L. Ed. 2d 264, docket 18-1057. PRIMARY. - [3] Wikipedia, 'Jacques Goudstikker', TERTIARY, used for the gallery at Herengracht 458, the scale of the business, the 1,200 catalogued works, the circumstances of his death aboard the SS Bodegraven on 16 May 1940, the black notebook and the 2006 return of 202 paintings. Flagged for replacement with the Goudstikker catalogue and the Dutch Restitutions Committee file. - [4] Restitutiecommissie (Dutch Restitutions Committee), recommendation RC 1.15, 19 December 2005, on the trading stock of Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker NV: 267 works claimed, 202 recommended for return, the Goering works returned and the Miedl works excluded as settled by the 1952 agreement. PRIMARY. - [5] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Cranach pair, reproducing the Norton Simon Museum's own catalogue data: dimensions of 190.5 x 69.9 cm for each panel and accession numbers M.1971.1.P and M.1991.1.P, with links to the museum's object records. Used because the museum's own site could not be reached; see the editor's note. - [6] Wikidata item Q88701731, 'Adam and Eve', TERTIARY aggregator, used only for the material (oil paint on plank) and the c. 1530 date, and cited here also as the source of the conflicting 1549 date and 187 cm height that this record rejects. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Lucas Cranach the Elder', TERTIARY, used only for the artist dossier: the Wittenberg court appointment, the friendship with Luther, the apothecary and printing businesses, the burgomastership, the winged serpent device and the serial character of the workshop. Flagged for replacement with Friedlaender and Rosenberg, Die Gemaelde von Lucas Cranach. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.