CHICAGO, June 13 -- The Art Institute of Chicago has paid an undisclosed sum to the heirs of a Jewish art collector who owned a 17th century sculpture by Francesco Mochi that was auctioned in France during World War II.
The sculpture, thought to depict a young John the Baptist, was among 151 works sold by the Vichy French government in Paris in 1941, a year after their owner, Federico Gentili di Guiseppe died.
Di Guiseppe, a prominent Jewish art collector, worked for the Italian finance ministry in Paris.
The bust disappeared for 47 years before surfacing at another Paris art auction in 1988. It was purchased by a London dealer who sold the piece to the Art Institute in 1989.
Germany invaded France in 1940 and di Guiseppe's family fled the Nazis resettling in the United States and Canada. They went to court in France in 1998 seeking five paintings from their parents' collection that were in the Louvre museum.
French courts nullified the 1941 sale and returned the paintings, which brought $3.7 million at auction at Christie's in New York in January. The family members successfully argued the 1941 estate sale was illegal because they could not represent the family's interests during the Nazi occupation.
The family also recovered a painting by Giambattista Tiepolo from a Berlin museum that fetched $2.2 million at auction.
The 1630 statue, titled "Bust of a Youth," was among the works auctioned in 1941, but it was not listed on an April Internet posting of artworks at the Art Institute with missing records for the Holocaust era. The bust had been attributed to Baroque master Gianlorenzo Bernini but was found to be a work of Italian artist Francesco Mochi.
"We are not divulging the amount of money, or even the percentage" that is donation and purchase, a museum spokeswoman said. The Art Institute will acknowledge di Giuseppe's previous ownership when the bust is displayed.
