[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/modig.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tDavid Nahmad\u2019s lawyers are asking a New York court to revisit its recent decision in the long-running dispute over Amedeo Modigliani\u2019s\u00a0Seated Man with a Cane<\/em>\u00a0(1918), citing what they say is new eyewitness testimony that could reopen the case.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a motion filed after the court\u2019s April 3 decision, which awarded the painting to the estate of dealer Oscar Stettiner, Nahmad\u2019s legal team argues that the work at the center of the claim may have been misidentified from the start. The suit was brought by Stettiner\u2019s grandson, Philippe Maestracci, who has been trying to recover the painting for more than a decade alongside the restitution firm Mondex. The work, estimated to be worth more than $25 million, was bought at auction by a Nahmad-linked company in 1996 and has been kept in Switzerland since.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAt the center of the new filing are two witnesses who say they remember a different Modigliani once held by the Van der Klip family in Paris. According to Nahmad\u2019s lawyers, that family came into possession of the painting during World War II and kept it hidden for years. The witnesses say the work they saw was smaller, darker, and didn\u2019t show a seated man or a cane\u2014raising the possibility, the lawyers argue, that the wrong painting has been the focus of the case all along.<\/p>\n \n\tThat account comes in part from a newly submitted affirmation by Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Allain, a longtime acquaintance of the Van der Klip family who recalled being shown a hidden Modigliani in their apartment that looked nothing like\u00a0Seated Man with a Cane<\/em>. He described a work about 55 to 60 centimeters tall, showing only part of a man\u2019s torso and no cane, and said he came forward only after reading coverage of the court\u2019s decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNahmad\u2019s lawyers say this backs up their longstanding argument that Mondex, which is representing Stettiner\u2019s heirs, identified the wrong painting. They also point to a 1946 report describing the missing work as a self-portrait\u2014something\u00a0Seated Man with a Cane<\/em>\u00a0is not\u2014and to a new catalogue raisonn\u00e9 by scholar Marc Restellini, which they say finds no link between the painting and Stettiner.<\/p>\n \n\tMondex pushed back sharply. \u201cWe look to Mr. Nahmad to stop using his millions to delay justice and to honorably return the painting as he promised,\u201d said James Palmer, an international consultant with the firm. He added that even if another Modigliani had been in the Van der Klip home, there is no evidence connecting it to the work looted from Stettiner. According to Mondex,\u00a0Seated Man with a Cane<\/em>\u00a0was in the family\u2019s possession from 1944 until 1996 and bears Stettiner\u2019s name.<\/p>\n \n\tThe filing comes just weeks after Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled that the painting had been looted during World War II and should be returned to Stettiner\u2019s estate, rejecting the Nahmad family\u2019s arguments about gaps in its ownership history and finding a clear line from Stettiner to its wartime seizure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNahmad\u2019s legal team has also filed a notice of appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/nahmad-seeks-to-reopen-modigliani-restitution-1234784019\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/modig.jpg?w=1024″] David Nahmad\u2019s lawyers are asking a New York court to revisit its recent decision in the long-running dispute over Amedeo Modigliani\u2019s\u00a0Seated Man with a Cane\u00a0(1918), citing what they say is new eyewitness testimony that could reopen the case. In a motion filed after the court\u2019s April 3 decision, which awarded the painting […]<\/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-1919681","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\/1919681","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=1919681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1919681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1919681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1919681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1919681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}