Nazi War Gold Crimes - Mafia Sting - Portrait

Click here: The Holy Family with a Lamb Giclee Print by Raphael at Art.com
http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/PD--12963570/SP--A/IGID--2207412/The_Holy_Family_with_a_Lamb.htm?sOrig=CRT&sOrigId=110&ui=7A912D25227D4E7EA71DA06DEC43F746

`The Lost Madonna` : Registration Number / Date: TXu000754417 / 1996-08-08

Portrait, connected to smuggling of Nuclear materials.


Italian intelligence agents involved in keeping track of nuclear smuggling in Russia, Eastern Europe, Iran and Libya say the Raphael, entitled The Madonna of the Hay, was offered to them by gangsters as part of a "sting" operation in which the agents posed as buyers of nuclear materials such as plutonium.

http://www.museum-security.org/reports/002399.html#7

Lost Raphael seized during Mafia 'sting'
(Richard Owen reports on how a mission to unmask nuclear merchants yielded a Renaissance masterpiece )

Times of London

THE Italian authorities will shortly decide the fate of a lost masterpiece attributed to Raphael and recovered from the Mafia during an undercover investigation into the smuggling of nuclear materials. Officials said there was growing evidence that organised crime was using stolen art treasures as security in underworld deals or as investments. "This could explain quite a few mysterious losses in the art world," one investigator said, including a Caravaggio masterpiece that disappeared from Palermo 30 years ago and has never been found. Italian intelligence agents involved in keeping track of nuclear smuggling in Russia, Eastern Europe, Iran and Libya say the Raphael, entitled The Madonna of the Hay, was offered to them by gangsters as part of a "sting" operation in which the agents posed as buyers of nuclear materials such as plutonium. The painting was last heard of in Germany in the 1920s. Its fate since then is unclear, but according to Aldo Anghessa, one of the Italian secret agents involved in the "sting", it had been in a Geneva bank vault. The painting was brought back to Italy, described as by a "minor artist of the Umbrian school" to avoid import tax. A trial of those involved in the deal recently ended in the conviction of two art dealers from Rome and a courier who brought the Renaissance painting from Switzerland. Maria Vittoria Marini-Clarelli, a fine-arts expert at the Ministry of Culture, confirmed that the painting had been confiscated. Signor Anghessa, 53, told Oggi magazine that a team of special agents had been tracking consignments of uranium, plutonium, caesium and scandium. "I cannot reveal too many details, but we were particularly interested in a factory outside St Petersburg," he said. The agents approached the smugglers, posing as interested buyers. "My job was to set up a bank account in Milan," Signor Anghessa said. "When the smugglers checked it and found I was solvent, they asked me if I would like to buy a painting by Raphael as well as nuclear materials. "I was astonished. They wanted £30 million - in cash. We set out to unmask the merchants of death and ended up being offered a missing masterpiece." The oil painting on panel, measuring 34in by 26in, is said to have been painted in Florence in 1506, when Raphael was 23. It depicts the Virgin Mary in a low-cut red dress holding the chubby infant Jesus in her arms. The boy holds a lamb under his right arm and feeds it hay with his left hand, while gazing back at his mother. In the 18th century the painting was recorded as the property of Count Monaldo Leopardi, father of the poet Giacomo Leopardi, who hung it in the family chapel at Recanati in the Marches. When Napoleon invaded the papal states in 1796, Count Leopardi, who was loyal to Pope Pius VI (1775-1799), had the Madonna carried in a procession to invoke God's help against the French. The Leopardi family was subsequently forced to sell it to pay its debts. In 1890 it was sold again at auction and went to Germany, where it was seen in 1926 by Oscar Fischel, a noted Raphael expert. It was never heard of again. Federico Zeri, Italy's leading art historian, saw the newly recovered Madonna of the Hay shortly before his death last year, and said he had little doubt that it bore "all the hallmarks" of Raphael's style between 1504 and 1508, when the artist was active in Florence. Born in 1483 in Urbino, Raphael transferred to Rome in 1508, decorating the Vatican apartments of Pope Julius II and the Villa Farnesina. Art experts are making extensive checks to ensure The Madonna of the Hay is not a pastiche or by his workshop pupils. But it bears a striking resemblance to Raphael's Madonna of the Meadow in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Madonna of the Goldfinch in the Uffizi, La Bella Giardiniera (La Belle Jardinière) in the Louvre in Paris, St Catherine of Alexandria in the National Gallery, and the Holy Family with a Lamb in the Prado in Madrid - although in that painting the Virgin (as John Pope-Hennessy observes in his classic study of Raphael) appears to be restraining the infant Jesus from embracing the lamb, a "symbol of His predestined fate". Signor Anghessa said he had been shown the painting in a hotel room - " I was overcome when I saw it" - and agreed to pay £15.5 million provided that the sale took place in Italy. The dealers were prosecuted for declaring the painting's value at £3,000 to avoid VAT, but the bigger fish were never caught.
Links :
http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/welcomeE.html- Website for the Uffizi Gallery in Florence
http://www.ocaiw.com/rafael.htm- Raphael images on the Net


http://www.museum-security.org/99/110.html#5
France hands back stolen Nazi loot to heirs . . .


http://www.museum-security.org/99/110.html#5
France hands back stolen Nazi loot to heirs
03:09 p.m Dec 14, 1999 Eastern
By Crispian Balmer
PARIS, Dec 14 (Reuters) - France's Culture Ministry said on Tuesday
it had returned 13 works of art stolen by the Nazis to families of
Jewish gallery owners, in the largest such handover of objects for
almost 50 years. However, nearly 2,000 other items recovered from
Germany at the end of the war remain unclaimed in French museums and
galleries, and officials said they saw little possibility of the
rightful owners, or their heirs, ever being found. ``We're scrapping
the bottom of the barrel now. There is very little chance that we
will be able to hand over the rest of the art, although there might
always be some nice surprises,'' said Francoise Cachin, director of
France's state museum network. Among the 13 art works released in the
past three weeks, were paintings, tapestries, stained glass and a
writing table. The objects were stolen from the Jacques Bacri gallery
in Paris and from three galleries owned by members of the Seligmann
family. Seven of the pieces ended up in the private collection of
Nazi chief Hermann Goering. The Nazis took an estimated 100,000 art
works from France during the war. Of these, 61,257 were found and
repatriated. Some 45,441 were reclaimed by their owners between 1945
and 1949. Most of the rest was sold off, with the state hanging on to
around 2,000 of the most valuable items which were placed in museums
and government buildings. Many of the owners of the unclaimed items
were thought killed by the Nazis and critics have accused France of
not doing enough to track down their heirs.

FRANCE DEFENDS RECOVERY RECORD
Officials on Tuesday said they had held exhibitions displaying the
works and even posted details of the art on the Internet in the hope
that people would recognise stolen family heirlooms or property. ``We
have been very scrupulous. Other countries have been much less
vigorous,'' said Norbert Engel, the Culture Ministry official
responsible for the unclaimed art. ``Austria, for example, sold off
their (stolen) works of art, which might have been returned. We have
a feeling they did not care much about finding the owners,'' he said.
A French commission is drawing up recommendations on what to do with
the remaining unclaimed items and is expected to issue its report at
the start of next year. Cachin said some of the objects might have
been legally sold to the Germans during the war, but the receipts
were missing. ``The art markets carried on. People sold their
possessions, they needed to eat,'' she said. Descriptions of art work
stolen from galleries were also sometimes so vague as to make
identification impossible. ``This is especially true of modern
works,'' Cachin said. Identification of the latest batch of returned
art works was made possible by fresh research of old archives which
had unearthed some previously forgotten documents. Almost 1,000
objects were returned to the Seligmann and Bacri families in the five
years after the war. The Culture Ministry declined to name the heirs
who received the 13 latest objects, saying only that some lived
abroad. It also declined to put a value on the objects, but said a
painting of the arrest of Christ by Cornelis Englelbrechtz and a 15th
century crucifixion scene by an unnamed German artist were especially
precious. Both belonged to the Seligmann family.