For years, a large, richly colored painting depicting a moment of sexual violence has stopped visitors in Gallery 634 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Once viewed as an image of Tarquin attacking Lucretia, as in Roman legend, the 17th-century work attributed to Eustache Le Sueur has more recently been described as a portrayal of the rape of Tamar from the Old Testament. Now newly discovered evidence suggests the painting’s history is as painful as its theme. Old court records indicate the painting, purchased by the Met in 1984, is likely the same one a Jewish art dealer, Siegfried Aram, left behind when he fled Germany as Hitler took power in 1933. The records, which recount the dealer’s unsuccessful effort to reclaim his painting for more than a decade after the war, were discovered by a researcher and photographer, Joachim Peter, who has spent years studying the history of Heilbronn, the German city where Mr. Aram once lived, including the treatment of its Jews and the devastation from Allied bombing.

Source: New York Times February 08, 2020 09:56 UTC