Cranach custody battle may go to Supreme Court
- May 20, 2010 00:34
Jerry Brown, California Atty. Gen. and gubernatorial candidate, has filed a legal brief with the United States Supreme Court that sets him against Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum in its effort to hold onto a nearly 500-year-old pair of paintings of Adam and Eve looted during the Holocaust.
Marei Von Saher maintains that Nazis confiscated the paintings from her father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch-Jewish art dealer.
The Norton Simon won a decision last July with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the argument that the paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder have been well-publicized highlights of its collection since 1976. In California, the regular three-year limitation clock had long expired by the time Von Saher first came forward to calim the paintings in 2001.