Restitution Dispute Over Prized Modigliani Ends With Loss For Nahmad

A New York court has ended an 11-year fight over an Amedeo Modigliani painting with a ruling that sends the work back to the family of its original owner. Judge Joel M. Cohen found this week that Seated Man With a Cane (1918) belongs to the estate of Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer who left Paris under pressure as Nazi forces advanced.

The decision is a significant restitution victory for Stettiner's grandson, Philippe Maestracci, who has pursued the case since 2011 with the help of Mondex, a firm that specializes in recovering looted art. The painting, valued at more than $25 million, had been held since 1996 by International Art Center, a holding company linked to the Nahmad family, after its purchase at a London auction.

In his ruling, Cohen rejected the Nahmads' argument that the work's ownership history was too uncertain to support restitution. Instead, he wrote that Stettiner“owned or at a minimum had a superior right of possession” before the painting was unlawfully taken, and that he“never voluntarily relinquished it.” The judge also said David Nahmad and the holding company failed to produce evidence showing anyone other than Stettiner had a valid claim.

The case turned on a familiar and often difficult question in Nazi-looted art disputes: whether the painting in question can be definitively matched to the work once owned by the claimant's family. Here, the court said the record was strong, citing prewar exhibition documentation and postwar restitution filings that tied the Modigliani to Stettiner. It also dismissed the provenance narrative attached to the painting when it surfaced at Christie's in 1996, calling it flawed and misleading.

That point mattered because provenance gaps can obscure wartime theft for decades, especially when works pass through opaque ownership structures. The court noted that Nahmad had acquired the painting in good faith in 1996, but said that fact did not outweigh the evidence of wartime looting. The ruling also drew renewed attention to International Art Center after the 2016 Panama Papers leak linked the Nahmad family to the entity.

James Palmer, founder of Mondex, said Maestracci was“overwhelmed with joy” that his grandfather's long effort had finally been fulfilled. The next step is the return itself, which the court said should now proceed under its order. For restitution advocates, the decision underscores how archival evidence, not just market paperwork, can determine the fate of a work long thought to be lost to history.

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