Europe

“Paintings looted by Nazi, recovered by Allies to be auctioned in NY”

“Paintings looted by Nazi, recovered by Allies to be auctioned in NY”

by Patricia Reaney via “Yahoo News“

“NEW YORK (Reuters) – Paintings looted by the Nazis during World War Two and retrieved by the Monuments Men, the Allied group tasked with returning masterpieces to their rightful owners, will be sold at auction on Thursday in New York.

The works, which will go under the hammer during Sotheby’s sale of Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture, were among the tens of thousands of works recovered by the art experts whose story is told in the George Clooney film “The Monuments Men,” which opens in U.S. theaters on February 7.

“The scale of looting was absolutely extraordinary,” said Lucian Simmons, Sotheby’s head of restitution.

“In France, for example, 36,000 paintings were stolen from institutions and largely from individuals. The Monuments Men managed to recover and return the majority of those,” he said in an interview.

Two small paintings in the sale, “La cueillette des roses” and “Le musicien” by the French rococo artist Jean-Baptise Pater, were chosen by Adolf Hitler’s air force chief Hermann Goering for his personal collection. . . . . .”

“New Candidates for World Heritage Titles”

“New Candidates for World Heritage Titles”

via “Deutschland.de”

“Hamburg’s Speicherstadt and the Naumburg Cathedral are to be included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List. This was announced by the Conference of Cultural Ministers. They have submitted the nominations to the GermanFEDERAL GOVERNMENT with the request that this be passed on to UNESCO in Paris.

Hamburg’s docklands Speicherstadt was built between 1885 and 1927 is widely regarded as the largest coherent and uniform storage and warehouse ensemble in the world, the applicants submitted. The Naumburg Cathedral in SAXONY Anhalt is, the Conference of Cultural Ministers continued, the most visible symbol of a unique cultural LANDSCAPE that evolved from High Medieval structures. The figures of the patron founders in the cathedral are “among the most outstanding created by European Medieval sculptors.”

The UNESCO World Cultural Heritage committee convenes once a year and will decide on the two nominations at its summer 2015 meeting. . . . “

“Fire Rages in Norway Heritage Village”

This is a great tragedy; our hearts go out to Norway today 😦

“Fire Rages in Norway Heritage Village”

via “Yahoo News“

“Oslo (AFP) – A large blaze on Sunday raged through a historic village in western Norway, destroying many of its famed 18th- and 19th-century wooden houses and forcing the evacuation of local residents, police said.

The fire in the riverside village of Laerdalsoyri, some 200 kilometres (miles) northwest of Oslo, began in a house on Saturday evening.

Fanned by strong winds, the blaze raged out of control overnight and it took firefighters until Sunday afternoon to extinguish it.

Laerdalsoyri is located in the West Norwegian Fjords area, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Police said 23 buildings including 16 homes were destroyed in the town, and hundreds of residents had to be evacuated. . . . .”

Additional Resources

“Walking Among the Etruscans”

“Walking Among the Etruscans”

by Michael Bleibtreu Neeman via “Epoch Times“

“Now disappeared, the Etruscans have left a cultural legacy, which influenced ancient Rome. The Etruscan people, composed of merchants and traders, settled on a fertile land rich in resources; they established their power not by force, but through social and economic means.

In a new exhibition, the Musée Maillol (Maillol Museum) in Paris presents the daily life of the Etruscans, unveiling a cosmopolitan and culturally rich civilization in which women played a role as important as men’s, which is an exception among ancient civilizations.

Because its origins remained an enigma, and has only been known for its funerary culture, the richness of the Etruscan culture was long ignored. However, archaeological excavations of the last few decades reveal new surprising aspects of this mysterious people coming from the Middle East.

The Maillol Museum traces the history of the Etruscans from their settlement in the Italian Peninsula in the ninth century B.C. with 250 objects coming from European museums and institutions, in particular from those in Italy. . . . .”

 

“Flea Market Renoir Painting Sparks Legal Battle With Museum”

“Flea Market Renoir Painting Sparks Legal Battle With Museum”

via “ABC NEWS“

“A one-of-a-kind Renoir painting the size of a napkin is at the center of an intense legal battle between a museum that claims it was stolen and a Virginia woman who claims she bought it for $7.

The tiny work of art is an 1879 landscape by the Impressionist painter titled “Paysage Bords de Seine.”

In court papers filed this week, the Baltimore Museum of Art claims the painting was stolen in 1951. As evidence, the Museum provided a 60-year-old police report, old museum catalogues and a receipt showing that a patron bequeathed the painting to the museum. . . . .”