300-year-old painting stolen by an American soldier during World War II returned to German museum

By CLAIRE SAVAGE
Associated Press/Report for America

CHICAGO (AP) — After going missing nearly 80 years ago, a baroque landscape painting was returned to Germany on Thursday. The FBI handed over the artwork by 18th century Austrian artist Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer to a German museum representative in a brief ceremony at the German Consulate in Chicago, where the pastoral piece picturing an Italian countryside sat on display. It surfaced after a person in Chicago contacted Art Recovery International last year claiming to possess a “stolen or looted painting” that their uncle brought back to the U.S. after serving in World War II. The German museum curator says “This is actually a very rare moment for us.”