The Cleveland Museum of Art has agreed to return to the Italian government a work that dates to the 13th century. A manuscript leaf, once reportedly part of a choral book near the city of Siena, has been in the museum’s collection since 1952, obtained in good faith from a collection in New York. It’s described on the CMA website as “Christ in Majesty with Saints” and illustrates the letter “A.” Working with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Italy, CMA officials "determined that the work should be transferred,” according to a press release.
Gerhard Lutz, the museum's Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art, told Ideastream Public Media new research indicated that the piece was actually stolen from the cathedral of Colle Val d'Elsa on January 19, 1932. Its whereabouts after that time are difficult to trace.
“It was a common practice in most of the 20th century to take apart books to cut out miniatures,” he said. “Many of them entered notable respected collections … and in many cases it was not possible to find out what happened with such as a small miniature. That's normal that we have gaps in the provenance when it goes back into the first half of the 20th century. We are much more thorough right now.”
The manuscript leaf, about the size of a magazine page, has not been displayed in Cleveland since 1993. The rest of the book was stolen in 1982 and the piece in question is “one of the few original parts of the precious manuscript that have survived,” according to Todd Mesek, chief marketing officer at CMA.
A year ago, the museum was contacted by the Italian ministry, which used photo comparisons of the other pages from the 1970s to determine that the “letter A” piece belonged with the book from Siena.
Both parties are working on the details of the physical return of the item. In a statement, Dr. Paolo D’Angeli, head of the ministry, said he appreciated that the Cleveland museum preserved the parchment. The entities entered a cultural cooperation agreement in 2008 that previously led to the transfer of 14 objects to Italy.
Museums across the country have been re-examining their collections as repatriation requests emerge and the origin of some pieces is questioned. Lutz said, in a collection the size of CMA’s, their online cataloged “supports and stimulates research.”
“We heavily rely on the collaboration of other institutions in other countries,” he said. “If they find out something, we can pick it up and confirm it. And if it's confirmed, we of course are happy to send it back. But I think it's too much for one institution to dig deeply into each object because that would take decades.”
Earlier this year, CMA covered some exhibits while determining how they might be classified under new rules as part of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Last year, the museum sued to retain ownership of a statue Turkish officials allege was looted in the 1960s. That piece remains “seized in place” in Cleveland pending litigation.
