A new generation of female researchers investigating the provenance of art

«L’estasi di Santa Cecilia» di Bernardo Cavallino

Camilla Brunazzo-Chiavegato, an art historian, presented her study on 4 November on the Venice Biennale as an art fair – a role the exhibition maintained until the early 1970s. During the exhibition, visitors and collectors could purchase the works on display; the fair’s commission was included in the final price. Alongside the works for sale were loans from private collections, which the Biennale committee facilitated by acting as an intermediary.

Brunazzo-Chiavegato’s research traces the changes in the system during the regime and brings to light the names of all those involved, as well as some little-known aspects. For some collections belonging to Jewish families, exhibiting at the Biennale became a means of salvation, as the works on display could then be exported abroad. In the post-war period, however, the event also facilitated the laundering of stolen works: their inclusion in the exhibition and subsequent sale served to ‘whitewash’ their incomplete or absent provenance. For Brunazzo-Chiavegato, the loans from the years immediately preceding the war were decisive; indeed, the Biennale’s registers and catalogues, which document who owned what at that time, are a valuable source for reconstructing the provenance of the looted collections.

A recent case illustrates just how significant they can be. On 3 April 2026, the New York State Supreme Court ordered the return of Modigliani’s ‘Seated Man with a Cane’, painted in 1918, to the heirs of Oscar Stettiner. Stettiner was a Jewish art dealer who had left Paris in 1939 as the Germans advanced, leaving the painting behind in his gallery. During the occupation, an administrator appointed by the Nazis sold it without his consent. In 1946, a French court recognised Stettiner’s right to restitution, but the work had by then disappeared. It resurfaced at Christie’s in 1996, when it was purchased for $3.2 million by a company owned by the family of the merchant David Nahmad. Today, its value is estimated at between 25 and 30 million.

For years, the defence had maintained that Stettiner’s Modigliani was a different painting. It was the Biennale itself that disproved this claim. The grandson, Philippe Maestracci, demonstrated that his grandfather had loaned that canvas to the 1930 Venice exhibition, a loan documented by photographs and archive records. Together with the Stettiner Gallery label on the back and post-war documents, this was the evidence that convinced Judge Joel M. Cohen. Nahmad has announced an appeal, and the case is not yet over. The case demonstrates, however, that an exhibition archive dating back almost a century can decide a case worth tens of millions.

5 November was dedicated to the national working groups of the Arbeitskreis, which deal with the provenance of assets looted by the Nazis and the Fascists. The Italian group, AG Italien, was presented by provenance researcher Katharina Hüls-Valenti. The Italian chapter brings together Italian and German researchers, both early-career and established, divided into ‘active’ members and members who follow the work. Since 2025, the Italian group of the Arbeitskreis has been collaborating with ICOM Italia’s Provenance Working Group. In recent years, it has organised international workshops and conferences in Venice, Florence and Rome, and next year it will be holding an event in Lucca.

Generally speaking, the picture that emerges from our time in Hanover is that of a generation of female scholars who are coming of age and finding, within the international network, the tools, methods and visibility that they still struggle to obtain at home.