Excerpt from article by JAMES CIRRONE, US NEWS REPORTER
Published: 15:01, 4 April 2026
A billionaire art dealer must return an Amedeo Modigliani painting to the estate of a Jewish man who was robbed of it during the Nazi occupation of France.
He ordered billionaire David Nahmad, whose holding company now owns the painting, to return the art work.
Decades after the Nazis seized the painting and sold it to an unknown buyer, it emerged again at an auction in 1996.
Nahmad’s firm International Art Center, bought the work at the auction and has kept it in Switzerland ever since.
The Nahmad family has been in the art business for generations and long resisted the effort by Stettiner’s estate to recover the painting.
Stettiner himself had brought a legal claim to court in 1946 after World War II ended. A French court ruled in his favor and ordered the painting be returned to him…
Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer, owned the painting. It was confiscated from his Paris shop by the Nazis. His descendants won a court battle this week to get the work returned to his estate
A lawyer for the Stettiner estate, Phillip Landrigan, accused Nahmad and his lawyers of dragging out litigation in hopes that ‘the heir would be forced to give up’.
The judge said he found the evidence tying Stettiner to the painting were compelling. Records showed he lent the work for a 1930 exhibition in Venice.
‘The evidence shows a straightforward and persuasive chain of ownership/right of possession flowing directly from Mr. Stettiner to Nazi seizure to a forced sale,’ the judge said.
‘Our client, Mr. Maestracci, is overwhelmed with joy and the satisfaction that after so many years the quest of his grandfather has finally been fulfilled,’ James Palmer, Mondex’s founder, told The Times.
‘We now look forward to Mr. Nahmad to abide by his promise to return the painting upon receiving the order of the court, which today he has now received,’ Palmer added.