A Memling annunciation with a wartime past
Project content
The Second World War left deep scars on our artistic heritage. After the war, many artworks that had been stolen, removed or left behind, were nevertheless returned to the rightful owners or their heirs. In 1952, two wings of the Madonna and the Angel of the Annunciation by Hans Memling were handed over to Bruges by the Department of Economic Recovery. Although this does not concern stolen goods, there is still a wartime story attached to them.
By Mieke Parez, Filip L. Demeyer and Till-Holger Borchert
Looted art?
During the Second World War, many privately owned artworks and cultural objects were left behind, removed and/or stolen. Public institutions also fell victim to the systematic theft of cultural property. The Kingdom of Belgium – occupied by Nazi Germany from May 1940 – was no exception. In particular – though not exclusively – Jewish-owned art ended up with art dealers and was sold. After the Second World War, a large number of cultural artefacts and artworks that were recovered were returned to the rightful owners or their heirs.
In some cases, works of art whose pre-war owners were not known were transferred to the countries from which the cultural artefacts had originated. This is how they ended up in various museums. Other artworks, which had entered the art market and were sold to private or public collections during the Second World War, were long regarded as unproblematic. In the meantime, however, awareness has grown that these too often constitute looted art.
During the Washington Conference in 1998, Belgium endorsed the principles concerning cultural goods looted and displaced under National Socialism. Museums and cultural institutions in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia cooperated with the Study Commission on Jewish Property and the Restitution Commission to clarify the provenance of these cultural artefacts. This concerned artworks that may have been the subject of Nazi looting or purchases, as well as the postwar restitution in and by Belgium.
The investigation took several years. After these enquiries, and from the perspective of transparency, it was decided to include artworks with an unidentified or incomplete provenance in a database, with the aim of gaining more information about their acquisition history. This database focuses mainly on paintings and sculptures that entered museum collections after the Second World War. This research is a close collaboration between the communities, the federal government and the institutions and museums involved.
The Renders Annunciation
In 1952, the two wings of the Madonna and the Angel of the Annunciation by Hans Memling (c. 1467-1470, semi-grisaille on panel, each 82.2. cm high x 26.5 cm wide, inventory numbers 0000.GR01254.I and 0000.GRO1255.I) were handed over to Bruges by the Department of Economic Recovery. The wings had come from the collection of Nazi leader Hermann Göring and had been recovered in Germany in 1947. The panels had not been looted from Jewish ownership but had been bought in London, in 1939, by the Bruges banker and art collector Emile Renders (1872-1956). The works came from the private Todd collection, Chobham-Woking, Surrey (UK) and, that year, they were lent to the Memling exhibition in the newly opened Groeningemuseum in Bruges. The approaching war gave the Bruges-based banker and art collector Emile Renders an opportunity to buy the Annunciation from the English owner, who was unsure whether his property could be safely returned to England. Renders was therefore able to negotiate a favourable price.
Two years later, Renders sold Memling’s Annunciation, as part of his painting collection, to Nazi leader Hermann Göring, through the German art dealer Aloys Miedel. Although the two wings were not stolen goods, they nevertheless carry a slight ‘wartime taint’.
Renders himself later claimed ownership after the works were recovered from the Göring collection, asserting that Göring had requisitioned them. An investigation, however, showed that he had been handsomely paid in gold bars for supplying Göring with about twenty artworks. As a result, it was judged that he had not been a victim and that the works belonged to the Belgian state, which then transferred the two Memling wings to the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.
Wings and triptych
The two panels are the outer wings of a triptych that Memling painted for Jan Crabbe, abbot of Ten Duinen Abbey in Koksijde. The central panel is now in the collection of the Musei Civici in Vicenza (Italy), while the inner wings ended up in the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan and are housed in The Morgan Library & Museum in New York. After the triptych was first reconstructed in 1994, during the major Memling retrospective in Bruges, the four wings and the central panel were reunited once again in New York, in 2016-17, for the exhibition ‘Hans Memling. Portraiture, Piety, and a Reunited Altarpiece’. The accompanying book was produced in collaboration with Musea Brugge and the Flemish Research Centre for the Art in the Burgundian Netherlands.
Bibliography
John Marciari (ed.), Hans Memling. Portraiture, Piety and a Reunited Altarpiece, with contributions by Maryan W. Ainsworth, Till-Holger Borchert, Noël Geirnaert, and others, Bruges – New York – London, Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016.
Images
Art in Flanders - Dominique Provost
