By: Camilla Brunazzo Chiavegato

Museum curators play a key role in legitimising looted or stolen artefacts. They act not only as individuals, but also as professional representatives of the museums to which they are legally, ethically and deontologically tied. But while their actions and  activities are not usually considered criminal, apart from when it involves insider theft, museum representatives are worth examining through the lens of criminological theories. 

As a means of example, the Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art  (2009 - 2011) case and the Nazi-era provenance of the three works involved – Self-Portrait with a Model   (1928), Republican Automations (Republikansche Automaten) (1920) and The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse  (1927) by George Grosz [Fig. 1] – allow us to reflect on the problematic collection practices of the founding director (1929-1943) and then director of collections (1947-1968) of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr.  

Figure 1. Transfers of property of the three works of art by George Grosz (Self-Portrait with a Model, 1928; Republican Automations, 1920; Poet Max Hermann-Neisse, 1927) protagonist of the legal case Grosz v. MoMA

Barr: Was he a‘Good Faith’ or a ‘Bad Faith’ Purchaser?

In the context of Nazi-era spoliations, US lawyer Raymond Dowd has defined ‘bad faith’ purchasers as “thieves, accomplices of thieves and receivers of stolen property [that] have received massive financial benefits at the expense of a murdered population despoiled not only of their property, but of their culture as embodied in the artworks torn from them.” 

Figure 2. Nazi propaganda against Jewish Bolshevism and on the dangers posed by the 'untermenschen'. Alfred Flechtheim’s face was used as the quintessential example of the regime’s enemy, undated (Robert Hunt Library).

At the trial of Grosz v. MoMA, the plaintiff avoided defining Barr outright as a buyer acting in bad faith, despite the fact, as we will illustrate below, that this museum director was well aware of the opportunities (and controversies) occurring on the global art market during his tenure at the museum. And yet he still chose to authorise the purchase of suspect artworks for the New York museum, previously classified by the Nazi Party as “Degenerate Art.” 

In this case, the source who first circulated German artist George Grosz’s “degenerate” works of French modernism and German expressionism was a Jewish art dealer named Alfred Flechtheim, who was forced to liquidate his galleries in Berlin and Düsseldorf “under duress” – a factor that is legally difficult to prove. What is known is that Flechtheim was refused the compulsory membership of the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste because of his Jewish background, which amounted to a ban on his business after Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor on 30 January 1933. He was also subjected to a stream of anti-Semitic propaganda against the dangers brought about “Jewish Bolshevism.” [Fig. 2] as well as the later the Nazi-organized traveling exhibition of so-called “degenerate” art in 1937.

Figure 3. Klein-er Portrait Max Hermann (mit cognac flasche) by George Grosz on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the most problematic of MoMA’s three acquisitions: The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse (1927). In 1928, Grosz consigned the portrait of his close friend from his 1920s period in Berlin to Alfred Flechtheim as “Klein-er Portrait Max Hermann (mit cognac flasche),” following an agreement that recognised the Jewish dealer as his exclusive sales representative. [Fig. 3].  It is insufficiently clear if this painting had been consigned to the dealer solely for sale, or if the proceeds for the sale of said painting, had Flechtheim sold the work, been earmarked for the repayment of the debt the artist had with his dealer. 

How did The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse make its way into the Museum of Modern Art’s collection?

To follow the circulation of Grosz’s painting it is useful to read correspondence between Barr and the emigrated German art dealers Charlotte Weidler and Curt Valentin, both of whom were conduits established in the US that helped peddle purged “degenerate” artworks in America.  Letters exchanged between Weidler and Barr, and Barr's correspondence with Valentin and other colleagues, provide us with unique insights into these individuals actions when it comes to the sale and purchase of suspect works. 

Figure 4. Charlotte Weidler’s passport photo from 1931.

As one of the first institutions in the US (founded in 1929) solely dedicated to the exhibition of modern art, the MoMA was rapidly expanding, and Barr maintained a relationship with Weidler. She was a German art historian and critic of North European contemporary art, who since 1924, had served as an advisor to Homer Saint-Gaudens, the director of the Carnegie Museum regarding German artists whose work might be selected for its annual international exhibitions.  [Fig. 4]. In addition to this Weidler is documented as having profited from the sale of artworks entrusted to her during the Nazi era, including pieces belonging to the Jewish art historian Paul Westheim, who fled Germany under persecution. After Westheim’s exile, Weidler claimed to have safeguarded his collection but instead sold works without his consent,  pocketing the proceeds. 

While Weidler played a pivotal role in introducing major works of German Expressionism to the United States, her professional dealings remain deeply controversial. Archival evidence shows that she profited from the displacement and loss suffered by others in the art world, particularly émigré collectors and dealers forced into exile from Germany. Her involvement with some of these collections has drawn scrutiny as emblematic of both wartime and postwar exploitation. Yet, her picture remains complicated: some scholars who have studied her correspondence describe her as a fervent anti-Nazi, highlighting the tension between her personal views and her self-serving actions and transactions.

On 5 February 1950, writing to Barr, on stationery from the Carnegie Institute, Weidler discussed her plans to travel to Europe to visit artists’ studios, hoping to acquire works that might appeal to the museum director. In this same letter, she informed Barr that “I have been lucky that some of my collection in Germany for instance an oil painting by Klee, works by Barlach, Nolde, Kokoschka, a strong, early George Grosz which once has belonged to the Kronprinzen Palais and has been ousted by Hitler [Grosz’s Poet], and drawings by Lehmbruck could be saved and have partly arrived in New York already.”

Figure 5. Curt Valentin in Berlin, 1936 (photo by Alfred Hentzen)

After Barr’s initial refusal, on 10 April 1952, the art dealer Curt Valentin later wrote to Weidler that he had managed to sell her painting, The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse to Barr for the New York museum for $850, despite the painting being damaged and requiring conservation treatment.  [Fig. 5].  

In that correspondence, Valentin writes:

“Dear Charlotte: 

We sold the painting “Portrait of Max Hermann-Neisse” by George Grosz for $850 to the Museum of Modern Art. However it seems the picture is in a very bad condition, and Mr. Barr told me the repairing cost would amount to $75, which he would like to deduct from the cost price.  I agreed to this, and I hope you will still let me have $100 profit, in which case I shall credit your account with $675. ”

At the time of the painting’s acquisition by MoMA, Alfred Barr made no effort to investigate its prior ownership or trace its path through the art market. Nor did he attempt to reach out to the work’s original creator, George Grosz, who had fled Nazi Germany for New York in 1933 and was in a position to clarify its provenance. Grosz could have confirmed the painting’s original consignment to dealer Alfred Flechtheim, or even overseen the restoration work referenced in Barr’s correspondence with Curt Valentin. Instead, Barr bypassed both avenues, opting to proceed with the purchase without further inquiry or explanation, leaving critical questions of provenance unaddressed.

Valentin, Not your run of the mill New York gallerist.  

Fig. 6. Curt Valentin’s Nazi Reich Chamber of Fine Arts Sales Authorisation.

On 14 November 1936 the Nazi Reich Chamber of Fine Arts gave a written authorisation to Curt Valentin, Alfred Flechtheim’s former assistant, to:

"… make use of your connections with the German art circle and thereby establish supplementary export opportunities, if [this is done] outside Germany. Once you are in a foreign country, you are free to purchase works by German artists in Germany and make use of them in America.” [translated from original]. 

This authorisation effectively made Valentin an out of country agent of the Nazi government during his time in New York. [Fig. 6].  Likewise, the sale of The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse (1927) by George Grosz was not his only sales transaction with the MoMA, nor the singular controversial one.

Fig. 7. Cover of the Gallery Fischer Auction Catalogue (June 30, 1939).

Valentin was a sales intermediary for the MoMA on 30 June 1939, when the Theodor Fischer Gallery in Lucerne, Switzerland organised an auction entitled “Paintings and Sculptures by Modern Masters from German Museums” during which 125 major confiscated works were put up for sale the proceeds from which were to be paid into a foreign currency account in London, available for the ‘German Reich’. [Fig. 7]. 

While many dealers boycotted this sale of appropriated works, refusing to finance the Nazi war machine, Valentin was less restrained.  He attended the auction purchasing on behalf of the Buchholz Gallery in New York and at the behest of Alfred Barr, to bid on paintings to be purchased with funds from donors of the museum.

Valentin bid on works of art that the Nazis had purged from German public museums under the 1938 law on “degenerate” art, and obtained the winning bid on five works: Andre Derain’s “Valley of the Lot at Vers,” stolen from the Cologne Museum; E. L. Kirchner’s “Street Scene” and Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s “Kneeling Woman,” both taken from the Berlin National Gallery; Paul Klee’s “Around the Fish,” pilfered from the Dresden Gallery, and Henri Matisse’s “Blue Window,” seized from the Essen Museum.

Figure 8. Cover of the catalogue for the MoMA exhibition “Art in Our Time”, 1939.

Two days after the extremely distasteful event, Barr’s correspondence from Paris, addressed to the museum’s executive director, Thomas Dabney Mabry, demonstrates that both museum employees were fully aware of the problematic consignor of the artworks being sold in Switzerland.  Barr himself, cowardly writes his colleague saying: “I am just as glad not to have the museum’s name or my own associated with the auction” while suggesting that the staff at the MoMA should frame their new acquisitions as distanced from the Lucerne auction: “state that they have been purchased from the Buchholz Gallery, New York.” The outcome, all five purchased works were exhibited in MoMA’s 1939 summer “Art in Our Time” exhibition, with no mention to their problematic circulation. Instead the works were credited to Valentin’s New York gallery and listed as anonymous loans.  [Fig. 8] 

The bridge between Weidler and museum director Barr was thus Curt Valentin who worked first for Galerie Flechtheim and later for Karl Buchholz. 

Buchholz was one of the four German dealers authorised by the Nazi Party's Reichskammer der bildenden kunste to sell “degenerate” art abroad to finance the regime. From 1937 to 1951, Valentin represented the Buchholz Gallery in its US venue in New York, where he sold art authorised by the German government for disposal. Valentin was also one of the preferred channels for acquiring avant-garde masterpieces for the fledgling MoMA and Barr recommended Valentin when he asked for the U.S. citizenship in 1942. 

Barr’s Ethical and Legal Constraints 

Barr’s unsavory purchase activities, made possible by his position of authority, can be analysed in terms of the professional standards of the time. The only ethical guidelines available during his tenure were contained in the vague Code of Ethics for Museum Workers, published by the American Association of Museums in 1925.

In the spirit of the American society of the 1920s, that document aimed to instil ethical behaviour and relations in workers at different levels of the museum’s hierarchy (staff-director, director-board of trustees). It is worth emphasising that the stated function of museums at this point in history was to hold their collections in trust “for mankind” and at the service of human life, based on the “three-fold ethical basis” of devotion, faith, and honour. 

The section “Business Dealings” deplored embezzlement by employees and highlighted the role of directors who, in the name of their responsibility and authority, should balance trustees, employees, and the public image of the institution while, somehow contradictorily, amassing a “representative collection.” However, “representative collections” should guarantee an interpretive context for individual objects in the museum setting, typical of colonial universal museums. 

Regarding the legal handling of Nazi-looted property on an international horizon, the Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories Under Enemy Occupation or Control (London Declaration, 1943) was issued to “combat and defeat the plundering by the enemy Powers of the territories which have been overrun or brought under enemy control” and nullify and reverse the property expropriated by Germans in occupied territories. The signers (the Allies and the French National Committee) appealed to the citizens of neutral countries to fight against the seemingly legal methods of expropriation that was being perpetrated by the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan). 

In addition, specifically in the United States, works classified as stolen property would have also fallen under the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA, 1948), Sec. 2315 Sale or receipt of stolen goods, securities, moneys, or fraudulent State tax stamps. 

Figure 9. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline Roque, and Margaret Scolari Barr at Picasso’s home, “La Californie,” in Cannes, France, July 1956 (Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, 12.II.M. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: James Thrall Soby).

Sixty-one years ago today, on a hot summer morning, the fishing trawler Ferruccio Ferri, worked the waters off the coast of Fano, and accidentally hauled in an extraordinary and controversial catch.  Tangled in the vessel's nets was a magnificent bronze statue of a young athlete.  One which only later would be attributed by scholars to the great Greek sculptor Lysippos.  

Encased in barnacles yet still gleaming with history, the Victorious Youth had rested for millennia on the shallow Adriatic seabed, his whereabouts unknown until a fishing net tore him from obscurity. That single, chance, encounter would serve to ignite one of the longest and most fiercely contested restitution battles in modern cultural heritage law.  And from the moment he surfaced, the fate of Italy’s bronze became the stuff of cultural crime legend. 

His odyssey, from his first appearance on the fishing docks of Fano, through bathtubs and cabbage patches, and into the hands of smugglers, restorers, and art dealers, took years of painstaking investigation to unravel. By the time he arrived, scrubbed of incriminating barnacles, on the polished marble floors of the Getty Villa, his journey had already drawn the full attention of Italy’s police and cemented the Atleta di Fano as the nation’s most contentious and emblematic case in Italy's global fight to reclaim looted antiquities.

Maurizio Fiorilli, the country's formidable prosecutor and one of the most respected cultural heritage lawyers of his generation, devoted his life to the long and often uphill battle to see the Atleta di Fano returned to Italy.  His passing this week leaves a profound void in the country's fight for cultural justice, but the attorneys who are following in his footsteps are carrying his case forward with the same resolve, unwilling to let his work, or Italy’s claim, fade.  

Fierce in the courtroom yet meticulous in his reasoning, Fiorilli spent decades untangling legal knots, gathering evidence, and navigating the diplomatic minefields that inevitably surrounded this high-value restitution case before retiring and passing the fight to the next generation. In his 2020 book Il Caso dell’Atleta Vittorioso (The Case of the Victorious Athlete), published by Edizioni Efesto, he documented the bronze’s twisting journey and the court’s ruling in precise detail, preserving for posterity not only the established facts of the case but also the Italian judiciary’s reasoning. The result is an enduring and accurate account of one of Italy’s most contentious cultural property battles.

In 2018, Italy achieved a milestone victory when its Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) affirmed what Fiorilli and his successor Lorenzo d'Ascia had long maintained—that the Atleta di Fano was Italian property and had been illegally exported. The ruling upheld the decision of Magistrate Giacomo Gasparini, whose decisive 46-page ordinance had already ordered the statue’s immediate seizure and restitution, unequivocally affirming that the bronze is the inalienable property of the Italian state and restoring the confiscation order previously issued in February 2010.  

With the Court of Cassation's ruling verdict, the legal pathway was clear. The John Paul Getty Museum, it seemed, would have no choice but to comply.

And yet, sixty-one years to the day after his discovery, the Atleta di Fano remains in Malibu, a centerpiece in the Getty Villa’s collection. Over the passing decades, the museum has continued to stubbornly defend its possession, steadfastly resisting Italy’s legal claims and sidestepping the mounting body of evidence that points to the statue’s illicit removal. 

Despite definitive court rulings affirming the nation’s ownership and repeated calls for his repatriation, the Getty has stubbornly held firm, clinging to its incorrect narrative while ignoring the clear and compelling evidence which concretises the statue's theft. The result is a stalemate that has stretched on for decades, emblematic of the wider struggle over cultural property and the unwillingness of some institutions to right historical wrongs.

In a 2018 statement, Ron Hartwig The Getty Trust's Vice President of Communications called Italy’s Supreme Court ruling “disappointing,” vowing that the museum would “continue to defend our legal right to the statue.”  He further insisted that “the facts in this case do not warrant restitution of the object to Italy,” claiming that “accidental discovery by Italian citizens does not make the statue an Italian object.” 

Such statements sidestep Magistrate Giacomo Gasparini’s detailed and well-reasoned judgment of 8 June 2018, which fully endorsed earlier rulings from the Court of Pesaro acknowledging the statue’s illicit export. The judge grounded his decision in clear violations of Articles 666, 667, and 676 of the Italian Criminal Code, as well as Article 174, paragraph 3 of Legislative Decree No. 42/2004 and Article 301 of Presidential Decree No. 15/1972. He concluded that the Atleta di Fano had been illegally exported and that the Getty’s later acquisition did not qualify it as a “holder unrelated to the offense.” 

The Court of Cassation upheld this reasoning, rejecting the Getty Museum’s appeal and declaring the confiscation final—a decision further validated by the European Court for Human Rights. 

Despite the ECHR decision, the Getty maintained its stance, asserting that the “Getty’s nearly fifty-year public possession of an artwork that was neither created by an Italian artist nor found within the Italian territory is appropriate, ethical and consistent with American and international law”  invoking arguments that run counter to both the letter of the law and contemporary museum thought on what constitutes the spirit of cultural stewardship. 

Given this unbroken chain of rulings at every judicial level, in both Italian and European jurisdictions, one must ask: what is gained by prolonging the dispute? 

The Getty’s continued refusal to comply transforms a settled matter of law into an exercise in obstruction, undermining not only the authority of Italy’s judiciary but also the credibility of international cultural property agreements, not to mention the Getty's own stance on responsibility taking when it comes to problematic pieces purchased for their collections. 

Each year of inaction sends the message that legal victories in the restitution of looted art can be neutralised by institutional intransigence—a dangerous precedent for such an important museum and a disservice to the principles the Getty itself claims it strives to uphold.

Meanwhile, the city of Fano waits for the Atleta, not just an Italian treasure; but as part of the city's shared cultural patrimony. 

Objects like this ancient statue do not belong behind the walls of intransigent institutions that ignore court orders.  They belong within the landscapes and cultural narratives from which they came. For Italians this bronze is more than bronze—it is a tangible embodiment of the ancient Greek world which once vibrantly stretched along the shores of their country and shaped a population.  He is the embodiment of Le Marche's multicultural identity, and a story rooted in the soil and sea of the people of the Adriatic coast.

Fiorilli understood this better than anyone. His career was defined by victories that returned looted masterpieces to their rightful homes, from ancient vases and silver hoards to entire archives of stolen books. But for him the Atleta di Fano was different. It was this case that crystallised the need for perseverance in the face of deep-pocketed resistance.  It was also proof that the legal fight for cultural reparations is not a matter of months or years—it is a multi generational struggle which must be passed on.

As we mark the sixty-first anniversary of the athlete's discovery, and as we mourn the loss of one of Italy’s most brilliant legal minds, we must also confront the uncomfortable truth: justice delayed is justice denied. To honour Maurizio Fiorilli’s work, the call must be clear, loud, and unrelenting: the Victorious Youth must come home. 

Every day it remains in California is a day that injustice is prolonged—and a day the J. Paul Getty falls short of the reparations it owes to history.

By:  Lynda Albertson

Francis Henry Taylor, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, had this to say about looted art entering the United States in the Sunday edition of the New York Times on 19 September 1943: 

"Private individuals might operate in a 'black market' of antiquities in which no questions are asked, but public institutions disposing of trust funds could not very well connive in the artistic liquidation of the artistic patrimony of Europe and act as public receivers of stolen goods." 

Interesting use of language.

A year later, the US Treasury Department (TD 51072) issued a directive whose purpose was to set up a filter for cultural goods imported into the US. Those objects worth more than 5000 dollars (1944 value) would have to be registered under the aegis of the Bureau of Customs and importers would have to provide proof of "bona-fide" ownership.

In the summer of 1946, that directive was rescinded on advice from the Roberts Commission which exulted in the idea that there was no proof that looted art from Europe was streaming into the US. Since its members were gagging to resume business as usual, they persuaded the Treasury to remove America's barriers to all cultural goods and be done with it.

Question: Did the Roberts Commission members and Customs agents actually know what a looted object looked like? Did the culprit object bear unmistakable markings that betrayed the misdeeds that resulted in its misappropriation? Did the Treasury, Customs, State, US museums have lists of stolen objects? 

The answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO.

Ardelia Hall, the State Department's cultural officer who oversaw US restitution policy for the greater part of 17 years, admitted that there had only been:

22 "lots" of works of art imported into the US in 1945 and 102 in the first half of 1946 (no idea how many objects are contained in a "lot"). Despite that major increase from 1945 to 1946, the feeling was that the art market needed to breathe again, unimpinged by government regulations.

Looking back, Taylor was on to something although his self-righteous outrage was just that. No one listened, not even his own museum, not even himself in later years.

Sources: New York Times, 19 September 1943, cited in Ardelia Hall memo dated 25 September 1946 to her staff at the State Department. RG 59 Lot 62D4, Box 11, NACP.

Maurizio Fiorilli, the tireless public prosecutor whose career redefined the global struggle against looted antiquities, has passed away today leaving behind a legacy etched in justice and cultural diplomacy. He also leaves behind a wife and a son, as well as a community of scholars and colleagues across the world who were privileged to learn from his insight, integrity, and unshakable belief in the power of cultural heritage, to unite people across time and borders.

From 1965 to 2017, Fiorilli represented Italy in various courts around the world.  Through his painstaking legal battles, unwavering diplomatic negotiations, and meticulous research, Maurizio secured the return of countless Italian masterpieces: from ancient vases and silver treasures, to stolen books and monumental sculptures, restoring them to the public trust where they belong. 

Vice Avvocato Generale dello Stato, Maurizio Fiorilli, Paolo Giorgio Ferri, Deputy Prosecutor of Rome (1991-2010), and Francesco Rutelli, former Culture Minister of Italy.

But his work was not simply about the objects; it was about righting historic wrongs, repairing the wounds of cultural loss, and affirming that cultural patrimony is not a commodity, but a shared inheritance that demands protection. 

Uncompromising in his principles, Fiorilli confronted the art market and museum world's most powerful players and institutions with a clarity that could not be ignored. He reminded museums, dealers, and governments alike of their legal obligations and their deeper moral responsibilities. His approach was direct, relentless, and unwavering: stolen heritage must go home.

Yet his most emblematic fight remains unfinished. As Italy’s Vice Avvocato Generale dello Stato, Fiorilli devoted years of his work to pursuing the return of the Victorious Youth bronze, sometimes referred to as L’Atleta di Fano. An ancient Greek masterpiece hauled in by fishermen from the Italian waters in the Adriatic, it was smuggled out of the country, and eventually acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum. 

The Victorious Youth bronze—L’Atleta di Fano just after its discovery and after restoration.

Fiorilli’s dedication was not confined to transatlantic battles abroad. He played a pivotal role in confronting cultural crimes at home, most notably in the Girolamini Library scandal in Naples, which uncovered the systematic theft of thousands of rare books under then-director Marino Massimo De Caro. In pursuing this case, Fiorilli reaffirmed that the fight for cultural heritage must defend against threats both outside and within, and that no one, no matter their position, or political friendships, stands above accountability when entrusted with a nation’s treasures.

Known as “Il Bulldog” for his unbreakable grip on the most complex cases, Fiorilli’s victories were more than legal successes.  They were acts of cultural restoration and moral reparation.  His guiding conviction; that cultural heritage is humanity’s shared memory, now resonates with even greater urgency. And with his passing, Italy and ARCA mourn the loss of a master negotiator, a moral compass, and one of the most formidable defenders of history our generation will ever know.

In 2007, Maurizio Fiorilli convinced the J. Paul Getty Museum to return 39 works excavated in Italy, including a 2,300-year-old vase depicting the Rape of Europa. At the time of his passing, he was still waiting for the museum to do the right thing regarding the "Getty" Bronze.  "Our successes have always been a team effort and are the result of patient and skillful work in "cultural diplomacy." It's been a challenge of dossiers, counter-dossiers, reports, analyses, descriptions, lengthy, scathing correspondence with buyers who deny any responsibility, and complicated face-to-face meetings to convince collectors and museums to return the stolen goods. Collection directors always make a point of ownership: "It's mine," they repeat, "it's proven, look how much I paid for it." We, on the other hand, make a point of culture." --M. Fiorilli 2014

The Getty still refuses to relinquish the Victorious Youth. To honour Maurizio Fiorilli’s memory, the world should demand its return—and continue his fight for justice, and the rightful homecoming of stolen heritage everywhere.

By:  Lynda Albertson

In 1675, Jesuit scholar Zacharias Traber published Nervus Opticus Sive Tractatus Theoricus in Tres Libros in Vienna, a richly illustrated treatise in three parts—optics, catoptrics, and dioptrics—engraved by copperplate engraver Tobias Sadeler. The work not only explored the science of light, reflection, and refraction, but also recorded unique historical descriptions of the Archbishop’s garden in Bratislava. Issued with two different dedications, only a very few copies of the edition dedicated to Archbishop György Szelepcsényi survive today in Hungarian public collections.

During World War II, one such copy, held in the library of the Eötvös József Collegium in Budapest, is believed to have been illegally removed. For decades, it seems, their loss went unnoticed.  

On 21 March 2022, a researcher alerted the Collegium’s library to a possible sighting: a copy of Nervus Opticus matching their missing volume was listed for sale online by a New York antiquarian bookseller for USD 19,500. Reaching out to the bookshop revealed tghat the book had been purchased at a Munich auction in 2007 and that they too were involved in trying to determine the Jesuit manuscript's prior circulation. 

Although the Civil Code (Act V of 2013) of Hungarian law, excludes the possession of protected cultural property illegally removed from libraries, it also states that ownership over them can be acquired if a museum document stolen from a library is purchased commercially and in good faith (for example at an auction). 

To establish the manuscript’s identity, the ELTE University Library and Archives, the legal successor to the Jesuit college library in Nagyszombat needed to prove their ownership of the object in question. 

To do so, when it comes to books and manuscripts, there are several ways in which a library might be able to establish its ownership of a volume.  They could look at handwritten possessor entries, the ex libris, which is usually glued to the inside cover of the book.  They could look for the manuscript's super ex libris (supralibros) with a coat of arms or monogram placed on the binding of the book, or compare  the ownership stamp (stock stamp).  In addition thay could look for entries in the Library's inventory book, which might also provide information that could be decisive in ownership issues. 

To do so, they requested detailed images from the cooperating book dealer. These in turn  revealed a possessor entry (“Colleg. S Jesu, Tyr: 1675”) and some traces of an ownership stamp. 

Multispectral imaging then confirmed that a stamp of the Eötvös József Collegium had been deliberately removed, and that the flyleaf and endpaper bearing other ownership marks had been replaced.  Archival research traced the manuscript’s history: from Nagyszombat, where the Jesuit college library held seven copies in 1690, to Buda in 1777, leaving one copy behind in a Catholic high school in Pozsony, which eventually entered the Collegium’s library. There it remained until its disappearance, most likely during the 1940s.

In 2025, following further confirmatory investigations conducted by New York authorities, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office formally seized the manuscript.  This being its first step in its formalised return to the Library.  

On 23 July 2025, the manuscript Nervus Opticus Sive Tractatus Theoricus in Tres Libros was ceremoniously handed over in New York by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos to Péter Szijjártó, Hungary's Foreign Minister.  The minister noted that this is the first known case of a stolen Hungarian antiquity being recovered with the direct involvement of the New York District Attorney’s Office, "a gesture he called deeply appreciated and symbolically significant"

For their own part the DA’s office underscored that advanced imaging technology was key to uncovering the removed stamp and proving the manuscript’s origins and rightful ownership, closing an eight-decade chapter in the history of a rare and important scientific work, and restoring it at last to its rightful home.

Evgeni Svetoslavov Mutafchiev flew to Switzerland from Dubai on Sunday, July 6th.  His visit to Zurich wasn’t to buy Swiss chocolates. Rather, his discreet arrival marked the final step in removing a legal axe hanging over his head—charges filed in relation to a New York investigation into antiquities trafficking.

On July 7th, he surrendered, was arrested, arraigned. He pled guilty on July 8th to a State of New York charge of conspiracy in the fifth degree (N.Y. Penal Law §105.05[1]). During his hearing, he also agreed to waive his right to appeal his conviction and confirmed having forfeited $750,000, an amount representing his proceeds of crime that the New York District Attorney’s Office had reasonably proven.

Mutafchiev, more commonly known as Eugene Alexander, is a dual Bulgarian and American citizen who was born in Varna, Bulgaria, along the Black Sea. Before becoming entangled in the illicit antiquities trade, he once worked as a reporter for a local television station in his hometown, before moving on to a public relations role at the city’s National Archaeological Museum.

That all changed in 1984 when he moved to Munich and began working as an “art and antiquity investment consultant.” In 1998 he relocated again, this time to the United States, where he went on to earn a Master’s degree from Cleveland State University and a Doctorate from New York University. Now holding academic credentials centring on Greek and Roman history, Alexander quickly became involved in cultural property crime, emerging as a key person of interest in a sprawling New York investigation targeting the circulation of looted artefacts in the state, while various other countries looked into his financial flows as a suspect in money laundering.

New York Court filings and open-source analysis indicate that Alexander leveraged both his family ties and connections with senior government officials and TIM—which, according to law enforcement and the U.S. State Department, appears to be an organized crime syndicate incorporated as a holding company based in Varna that increasingly looks like Multigroup in its efforts to penetrate as many illegal sectors as possible. 

Alexander also actively circulated large numbers of looted antiquities, facilitating false provenance for some of the high-value objects he handled which were, then laundered forward through European and US ancient art dealers before being sold to wealthy collectors. To accomplish this, Alexander made use of a network of shell corporations and offshore banks identified as operating in Malta, Liechtenstein, the Crown Dependency of Jersey, and the Seychelles.

One of the most notable objects the New York hedge fund mogul bought from him was this1400–1200 BCE larnax—a small chest for human remains, painted with aquatic motifs.  The artefact was crafted in workshops near Rethymno on the island of Crete, a region which unfortunately as long been a frequent target of clandestine excavations and looting.  

Steinhardt paid Alexander $575,000 for the Larnax via Seychelles-based FAM Services via SATABANK —a Malta-based financial institution.  SATABANK was wholly owned by two entities (Christo Giorgiev and a private limited company), with Alexander being a 19.8% owner of SATABANK. In 2020, the European Central Bank revoked SATABANK’s banking license due to an on-going investigation into its money laundering.  This particular artefact was restored by Flavio Bertolin who reconstructed the Larnax from fragments.  It also appears in a photograph recovered from Steinhardt’s records which showed the Minoan container when it was freshly looted and still broken into several large fragments. 

As part of his trafficking scheme, Alexander cultivated sources across Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, especially in Greece and Turkiye, where source country looters sent him photographs of freshly excavated artefacts. Once selected, the illicit material was then smuggled into Germany or the UK, where he arranged for the objects to be cleaned and restored, either by Flavio Bertolin in Munich or Darren Bradbury in London.  In some instances, plundered material would be  authenticated through thermoluminescence (TL) testing, conducted by Ralf Kotalla, who also supplied authenticity certificates to other suspect dealers with ties to illicit trafficking, including Gianfranco Becchina.

Once restored and prepared for market, many of Alexander's looted artefacts circulated with Fuat Üzülmez, a Turkish Syriac dealer born in Mardin, Turkye who ran Artemis Gallery in Munich.  Other were circulated with Hubert Lanz of Numismatik Lanz in Austria, or in the United States via Ward & Company, Fine Art in New York.  Dozens of these fresh finds were given vague provenance statements, such as “ex Geneva private collection, acquired in the early 1990s,” or, less frequently, “acquired in the early 1980s.”

Alexander's connection to trafficked material surfaced publicly according to a stipulation dated 6 September 2023, when Michael Ward agreed to plead guilty to Criminal Facilitation in the Fourth Degree (N.Y. Penal Law §115.00[1]).  As part of his plea agreement, he voluntarily surrendered 44 antiquities, valued at approximately $22 million, which he, or the District Attorney, had identified as having been sold, consigned, or previously held by Eugene Alexander. Ward also agreed to fully and truthfully cooperate with the prosecutor's continued investigation into Eugene Alexander's illegal activity.

According to Ward's charging document, during a multi-national investigation conducted in cooperation with the Manhattan ATU, US Homeland Security - HSI, and law enforcement units in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom into Eugene Alexander, Michael Ward, and others cultural property crimes, German authorities carried out a raid on Alexander's apartment on 23 February 2022 in Germany.  There, they recovered, among many objects, Alexander's computers and various data drives.  On these officers recovered a series of photographs that various looters had sent to the dealer, many of which included depictions of plundered antiquities in a freshly looted state, prior to their being cleaned or restored. 

Over the course of this multi-year investigation, the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit (DANY) conducted a total of six seizures from Alexander, recovering an additional 67 looted antiquities which the DA estimates are worth $31 million. This brought the estimated total value of material seized in the US and connected to this single individual to just over $100 million.

Despite the damages done to the world's historical record, Alexander’s arrival to Switzerland this summer was low key and voluntary, coordinated in cooperation with the Manhattan DA's office and his defense attorneys, Elliot Sagor and Roger Stavis of Mintz & Gold’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Investigations practice.  Unlike other defendants wanted in New York in relation to other DANY antiquities investigations—such as Subhash Kapoor and Georges Lotfi—Alexander was not subject to an INTERPOL Red Notice, a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.  Instead, his quiet arrival in Zurich signalled that broader cooperating negotiations were already in progress with US authorities, ultimately culminating in his trip to Switzerland, his guilty plea and sentencing.

What Comes Next?

The Eugene Alexander case sheds light not only on this interconnected trafficker's operations, but on the systemic mechanisms, within conservation sectors, the art market and in banking, that allow freshly looted illicit antiquities to circulate, via complex supply chains, while profits made by their sales can be channelled fluidly across borders and jurisdictions to offshore banks.

With Alexander's Zurich sojourn complete and his 8 July 2024 conviction confirmed, the New York District Attorney’s Office has officially concluded its case against him, as well as the state's case against his US associate, Michael Ward, who was convicted a year and a half earlier and who died this year on 19 March 2025.

To date, Alexander has not publicly addressed any of his legal entanglements, nor has he explained why, at least for a while, he elected to reside in Dubai—a known haven for individuals seeking to avoid extradition to Europe and the US. 

Authorities with Spain's Policía Nacional have dismantled a sophisticated antiquities trafficking network operating across Córdoba, Jaén, and Seville. As part of the investigation, code-named Operación Prados, Spain’s National Police arrested seven individuals suspected of orchestrating an illicit operation that trafficked thousands of archaeological artifacts—including coins, brooches, oil lamps, and other freshly looted material.

The investigation began in March 2023, when police monitoring online sales activities identified a suspicious numismatics business who is a member of the  Asociación Numismática Español based in Mairena del Aljarafe, just outside Seville. The business advertised widely across online auction platforms such as MA Shops, vCoins, Biddr, and eBay, as well as through its own virtual storefront. Investigators were alerted by a telling detail: several coins listed for sale still bore traces of soil, suggesting they had been recently unearthed—likely through illegal excavation. If confirmed, their sale and export would constitute a crime against historical heritage under Article 323 of Spain’s Penal Code which states:

1. Whoever causes damage to assets of historical, artistic, scientific, cultural or monumental value, as well as to archaeological, land and underwater sites shall be punished with a prison sentence of six months to three years or a fine of twelve to twenty-four months. Acts of plunder of the aforementioned sites shall be punished with the same penalty.

Following a lengthy investigation, authorities determined that the seven individuals had, over a five-year period, built a pipeline of looted material sourced directly from illegal metal detectorists working from unknown excavation sites across Andalusia. These items were then marketed and sold to collectors across the globe, without the mandatory cultural export permits, in direct violation of Spain’s national heritage laws.

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of the Interior, the group used shipping hubs in Linares and Lucena to distributethousands of ancient coins and antiquities to buyers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In order to evade detection, they routinely mislabeled parcels as “gifts,” avoiding the formal customs clearance process and lowering the risk of inspection.

In a coordinated police operation, simultaneous raids were carried out at three locations—Mairena del Aljarafe, Linares, and Lucena—resulting in the arrest of three couples and one employee. Authorities seized approximately 3,000 artefacts, 73 silver coins, and €37,625 in cash. Prior to these arrests, law enforcement had already intercepted a single outgoing shipment containing 22 bags with more than 1,900 archaeological items.

In total, investigators estimate that the network generated as much as half a million euros in illicit revenue over the past five years.

This Spanish operation highlights the increasingly sophisticated mechanisms behind modern heritage exploitation.  Looters using metal detectors in archaeologically rich regions continue to funnel artefacts directly into the global antiquities market through well-connected criminal networks.  These networks, in turn, rely on e-commerce platforms that offer little to no vetting—creating the perfect storm where illicit cultural property can be laundered and sold across international jurisdictions with minimal scrutiny.

The practice of mislabeling parcels as “gifts” further illustrates the challenge of tracking both the physical and financial flows tied to looted cultural goods.

Why this matters: 

Spain’s archaeological heritage—spanning from prehistoric settlements to Roman cities—is a shared cultural legacy. When artefacts are removed without documentation or context, we lose irreplaceable pieces of history. This crackdown by Spanish authorities sends a clear message: stolen heritage will be pursued, recovered, and protected.

The anthropomorphic coffin of Pa-di-Hor-pa-khered, believed to have belonged to a member of Egypt’s elite during the Ptolemaic era (4th–3rd century BCE), represents a compelling case in the study of illicit antiquities circulation and restitution.

In October 2016, a file is opened at the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office (Notice number BR.68.LL.101942/2016)  for suspicion of art trafficking, regarding a striking gold-faced coffin once believed to have rested undisturbed in a necropolis in ancient Egypt.

The artefact made headlines this week in the cloister of the Royal Museums of Art and History, at the Cinquantenaire, not for its craftsmanship or symbolism, but because it was being restituted after having been illegally trafficked, and handled by multiple ancient art dealers and intermediaries, including Europeans Jacques Billen of Galerie Harmakhis in Belgium and Jaume Bagot Peix, operator of J. Bagot Arqueología in Barcelona.  The coffin's former occupant was a man by the name of Pa-di-Hor-pa-khered, (he who was given by Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis), his body long since dumped along the way.  Despite it's beautiful inscriptions, meticulous workmanship and coloured glass inlays in the eyes and breastplate, without its occupant it is just another sad example of how looted burial antiquities move—quietly, persistently, and without mercy or respect for the deal—through the global art market.

According to an article from Paris Match Belgique in December 2017, the coffin, along with a stone statuette had been stolen from an archaeological site in Egypt in December 2015 and where then smuggled out of the source country, ultimately ending up with the ancient art dealer in Le Sablon, in Brussels.  But despite these objects identification a decade ago, the coffin's return to HE Mr. Ahmed ABU ZEID, the Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt to Belgium, Luxembourg and to the European Union and NATO, was just the final step in a long and complex legal procedure to bring the artefacts home.

Initiated following an international letter rogatory issued by the Attorney General of Cairo, and assisted by law enforcement partners in multiple European countries, the judgment requiring the artefact's restitution was issued by the Court of Cassation in Belgium on 9 April 2025. 

But this story isn’t just about one object. It’s about how looting, laundering, and legitimate-seeming sales and business relationships all intersect, and how buyers, sometimes unwittingly, often become the final link in a long and illegal chain. And it’s also a reminder that an object once buried with care over 2,000 years ago can (still) tie up judges and lawyers in legal battles, diplomatic gestures, and unending debates about who owns the past in the 21st century.

I would like to think the underworld god Osiris has kept watch over where this man’s body ultimately lays. 

Following a two-year investigation, culminating in a coordinated effort between Spain’s Guardia Civil and Italy’s Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, 62 valuable cultural assets were repatriated to Spain today under the banner of Operation Altarpiece in a ceremony held at the “Swiss Guards Hall” of the Royal Palace in Turin.  The investigation was directed by Investigating Court No. 1 of Marbella, which worked closely with Eurojust to coordinate international legal cooperation. 

The case began in June 2023 when the Guardia Civil received intelligence via Europol’s Secure Information Exchange Network Application (SIENA), alerting them to the seizure in Italy of a carved polychrome and gilded wood altarpiece, with scenes of the Passion of Christ from the 16th century.  This religious work of art had been illegally exported from Andalusia five years after Spanish authorities had denied its earlier export request, made by the now-deceased German couple who had been residing in Marbella (Málaga).

Under Spanish law, cultural properties of this nature—i.e., artworks over 100 years old, included in the General Inventory of Movable Property of Historical Heritage, or valued above specific monetary thresholds (ranging from €15,000 for drawings, engravings, and photographs to €150,000 for paintings)—require a definitive or temporary export permit.  The seized altarpiece in question lacked any of these necessary authorisations.

As the investigation expanded, authorities focused on tracing how this altarpiece had been removed from Spain and transported into Italy and whether the object's holders had trafficked any additional artworks out of the country.  During their subsequent investigation, officers determined that over 90 cultural objects had been exported from Marbella using a non-specialised transport company which moved Renaissance panel paintings, some configured as triptychs, sculptures, vases, tapestries, French 17th and 18th century furniture, and works attributed to artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Auguste Rodin, and Pieter Brueghel, (the younger).

Italian investigators located many of these works in the villa of Günter Hans Ludwig Kiss, on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Lesa, the same home where the altarpiece had been recovered.  Other works were traced to art galleries, as well as private residences, in Genoa and Milan.   Still others had been sold onward and re-exported from Italy to a third country.  Kiss, the controversial German garbage magnate, was once listed in the top 300 list of rich businessmen in Switzerland, and died, at the age of 81, on 04 February 2023, a few weeks after his wife's own death.  

While alive, the German entrepreneur was involved in numerous legal cases: both civil and criminal for his waste management activities. In the 1990s, he was placed trial for environmental crimes committed with the commissioning of a Thermoselect plant.  Having sold their properties in Switzerland and Spain, and without heirs, the Kiss assets, contested by creditors, were slated to go to the Kan Foundation, a non-profit organisation only established in the tax haven of Liechtenstein in 2023.

As a result of thier line of inquiry, the Spanish court issued multiple European Investigation Orders to judicial authorities in Italy and Germany, along with an International Letter of Request to the United Kingdom, seeking the restitution of the works located in each of the aforementioned jurisdictions.

On Thursday, 16 December 2021, at least two of the seized paintings on view during today's restitution ceremony had been consigned for sale to Cambi Casa d'Aste for an Old Masters sale held at Castello Mackenzie in Genova (Italy).  The first being this early 16th century painting, representing the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne believed to have been painted by members of the Antwerp School, the painting is estimated to be worth between €30,000 to €50,000. 

and this 16th century, 'Triptych depicting the Holy Family and angels' also from the Antwerp School values at between €20,000 and €30,000.

Given that no provenance details accompanied either advertisement for this auction,  one also needs to look closely, not only at the business mogul Günter Hans Ludwig Kiss, but at the origins of these Antwerp School works in relation to World War II-era claims. 

No rules followed, too few questions asked

This restitution case underscores the importance of applying for, and legally obtaining, export permits for cultural property when transferring art works from one country to another.  Legal requirements such as these are designed to prevent the illicit removal of historically or culturally significant objects, and allows national cultural authorities to assess each item’s provenance and artistic importance to the nation prior to authorising removal. 

The investigation also highlights the lack of consistent due diligence on the part of some art market resellers in verifying the legal status of artworks before accepting them for purchase or agreeing to take them under consignment. 

Due diligence is not simply best practice—it is essential for safeguarding a nation’s heritage and ensuring transparency and accountability within the international art trade.  Institutions and private dealers should be prepared to ask potential sellers and consignors tough questions, and to require proof of proper documentation, including export permits when required, in order to prevent inadvertently facilitating the sale of illicit cultural property.  

Failure to do so, or intentionally turning a blind eye, exposes collectors, art dealers, and auction houses to reputational damage and undermines collective efforts to protect cultural heritage from being lost to illicit markets.

By:  Lynda Albertson