[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/modig.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tAn 11-year-long legal dispute over a prized Amedeo Modigliani painting looted during World War II has concluded in a loss for billionaire art dealer David Nahmad and his family, marking an unlikely restitution victory for the heirs of its original Jewish owner.<\/p>\n
\n\tA New York judge ruled this week that Seated Man With a Cane<\/em> (1918) rightfully belongs to the estate of Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer who left the portrait behind under duress while fleeing Paris ahead of the Nazi occupation. The court found that the painting was illicitly seized and illegitimately transferred, rejecting the Nahmads\u2019 longstanding argument that its provenance, or ownership history, was unclear.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOscar Stettiner owned or at a minimum had a superior right of possession of the painting prior to its unlawful seizure,\u201d Judge Joel M. Cohen wrote, as first quoted by the New York Times<\/em>, \u201cand he never voluntarily relinquished it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe judge added that David Nahmad and the Nahmad holding company \u201cfailed to raise any material issues of fact, and offered no evidence identifying anyone other than Mr. Stettiner as the owner of the painting or suggesting that he voluntarily relinquished it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe ruling caps an 11-year legal campaign led by Stettiner\u2019s grandson, Philippe Maestracci, who has sought to reclaim the painting since 2011, alongside Mondex, a company specializing in the recovery of looted art. Valued at more than $25 million, Seated Man With a Cane<\/em> has been held since 1996 by International Art Center, a Nahmad family\u2013linked holding company that purchased it at a London auction.<\/p>\n \n\tIn court, both parties centered their arguments on a well-worn question in Nazi-looted art disputes: whether the painting now held by the defendants could be definitively identified as the same work once owned by Oscar Stettiner. The Nahmads\u2019 attorneys argued that omissions and inconsistencies in the provenance created credible doubt. The New York court disagreed, finding the evidence overwhelmingly favored the claimant and citing a wealth of prewar exhibition records and postwar restitution filings tying the painting to Stettiner.<\/p>\n \n\tThe judge also rejected a provenance narrative attached to the painting when it appeared at Christie\u2019s in 1996, calling it flawed and misleading\u2014whether by error or design\u2014and noting a recurring issue in restitution cases where inaccurate provenance can obscure a work\u2019s Nazi-looted origins.<\/p>\n \n\tThe case was further complicated by the painting\u2019s opaque ownership structure. For years, Nahmad maintained that it did not belong to him personally but to the offshore entity International Art Center. This position came under scrutiny after the 2016 Panama Papers leak revealed links between the Nahmad family and the holding company. The court acknowledged that Nahmad had acquired the painting in good faith in 1996, but its history of wartime looting reinforced the Stettiner family\u2019s ownership claim.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOur client, Mr. Maestracci, is overwhelmed with joy and the satisfaction that, after so many years, the quest of his grandfather has finally been fulfilled,\u201d James Palmer, founder of Mondex, told the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe now look forward to Mr. Nahmad abiding by his promise to return the painting upon receiving the court\u2019s order, which he has now received,\u201d Palmer added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/modigliani-restitution-dispute-nahmad-family-loss-1234779947\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/modig.jpg?w=1024″] An 11-year-long legal dispute over a prized Amedeo Modigliani painting looted during World War II has concluded in a loss for billionaire art dealer David Nahmad and his family, marking an unlikely restitution victory for the heirs of its original Jewish owner. A New York judge ruled this week that Seated Man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1867201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1867201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1867201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1867201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1867201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}