Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer
1914-1916 · Oil on canvas
Private collection
Impounded in the Lederer apartment in Vienna in November 1938 and restituted to a surviving brother nearly ten years later, Sotheby's published chain records.
Stolen and recovered
Taken. Sold on. Hidden. Found. Fought over. Sometimes returned.
51 works in the archive were stolen, looted or confiscated: by armies, by the Nazi state, from tombs, from houses and museums. Some came back; some are still missing. Each record tells what happened next, step by step, with its sources.
Each status is the one the record documents on the date shown. It is not a statement about anyone who holds a work today beyond what the cited sources say.
Returned
Restituted to the heirs or repatriated to the country it came from.
The Euphronios Krater
c. 515 BC · Terracotta
Museo Archeologico Nazionale Cerite
Generally believed to have been dug from a tomb at Cerveteri in December 1971, the Trafficking Culture encyclopedia records, the krater was bought by the Metropolitan the following year and given back to Italy in 2008.
Breguet No. 160, the Marie-Antoinette
1783 · Gold
L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem
The museum says this watch was among 106 clocks taken from its Jerusalem galleries in April 1983 and among the first 39 pieces returned to it in August 2006.
The Rothschild Prayerbook
c. 1505-1510 · Tempera
Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth
Appropriated from the Rothschild palace in Vienna in 1938, Christie's records, and restituted in 1999 under the Austrian law that reaches works given to the state on condition that other works could be exported.
The Lydian Hoard (Karun Treasure)
c. 550-450 BCE · Gold
Usak Museum of Archaeology, Usak, Turkey
The Art-Law Centre case note records that the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave the hoard back to Turkey under a settlement in September 1993, and Turkish state media report that one gold brooch was taken from the Usak museum afterwards and came home from Germany in 2013.