Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 480-year-old “Adam and Eve” diptych
If the case ever goes to trial, it would focus on the painting’s journey over the past 100 years. Did it belong to the Stroganoffs, a family of Russian nobles, before the Russian Revolution of 1917 -- or to the church where it had hung before being declared national property by Soviet authorities? In 1931, the Soviets sold it to Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch-Jewish art dealer; there’s no dispute that the Nazis looted it from him in 1940, and that victorious Allied forces restored it to the Dutch government after World War II. But did an early 1950s settlement between the Netherlands and Goudstikker’s heirs extinguish their claim to “Adam and Eve”? If not, did the Dutch have a right to subsequently sell it to the Stroganoffs’ heir in 1966, after he claimed it as family property? And ultimately, does the Norton Simon have clean title to this masterpiece showing Adam and Eve moments before their fall? Or has it been tainted by a century’s historical sins?
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