Museum to Relinquish Cranach Painting Sold as Owner Fled Nazis

The Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania is set to auction a portrait of the Duke of Saxony attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop after reaching a settlement with the heirs of the painting’s German Jewish owners, who sold the painting under duress while escaping Nazi Germany, theNew York Timesreported. The oil-on-panel work,Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony, ca. 1534, will be sold by Christie’s in January 2025; the museum will share the proceeds with the descendants of Henry and Hertha Bromberg, who left Germany in 1938.

“This work of art entered the market and eventually found its way to the museum only because Henry Bromberg had to flee persecution from Nazi Germany,” Max Weintraub, president and chief executive of the museum, said in a statement. “That moral imperative compelled us to act.”

Henry Bromberg, a judge living in Hamburg, inherited the painting from his father alongside other works. The couple sold the paintings as they wended their way through Europe, passing through Switzerland and France before sailing for the US in 1939 and settling near Allentown shortly thereafter. The museum said that it purchased the painting in 1961 from a New York gallery. Both parties agreed that the painting had been sold in a desperate move to raise funds for the Brombergs’ escape; at issue was whether the couple parted with it before they left Nazi-occupied Germany, as the heirs contended, or afterward, as the museum suggested. The uncertainty surrounding the painting’s transfer led to the two parties reaching a compromise, rather than to restitution.

“It’s a case where the museum really was motivated by the ethical code on American museums on these issues and the ethical compulsion to reach a compromise where possible,” Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a lawyer for the museum, told the Times.