A Painting With a Nazi Past

Almeroth-Williams said that now seems to be incorrect. What is known, he said, is that the painting was part of a collection belonging to someone named Emil Goldschmidt, of Frankfurt, auctioned in 1909. The identity of the buyer is still not known, he said.

In 1999, given growing concerns about Nazi looting of art, the gallery posted the painting on its Web site with 120 others whose ownership and location were unclear during the Nazi era, 1933 to 1945.

In December 2004, Almeroth-Williams said, the gallery received an e-mail from Jay Hartwell of Hawaii, who said his mother, Patricia Lochridge Hartwell, had owned the painting from 1945 until she sold it to the Silbermanns in 1963. Reached Thursday in Hawaii, Hartwell said he wanted to help the gallery "perhaps find the painting's rightful owner."

Patricia Hartwell, who died in Hawaii in 1998 at age 82, was a 1938 graduate of Columbia Journalism School who spent decades as a radio and print reporter, her son said in a telephone interview.

She first joined CBS Radio, then wrote about the war in the Pacific and in Europe for Collier's and Woman's Home Companion magazines. She was present at the iconic raising of the U.S. flag over Iwo Jima in the Pacific in February 1945 and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany two months later, her son said.

According to the National Gallery, in 1945 she was allowed to take a painting from a warehouse full of art that was then controlled by U.S. forces. Jay Hartwell said that is how he and his family understand the story, but he said, "I am unable to verify exactly what happened. We just don't know."

She then took the painting with her back to the United States, and her son said he recalled it hanging in their New York home.

Hartwell had a clear interest in art. After the war, she joined UNICEF in New York as director of information, which required her to travel the world buying paintings to use for UNICEF Christmas cards, said her son.

She moved to Arizona and became director of the Scottsdale Fine Arts Commission, overseeing construction of the city's Center for the Arts. After moving to Hawaii in 1971, she was involved with the Arts Council of Hawaii.

Patricia Hartwell and her husband approached the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1961, seeking to sell the painting, said Jay Hartwell. She sold it two years later to the Silbermanns.

The Art Newspaper, the bible of the art world, first reported Patricia Hartwell's connection to the Cupid painting in November 2006. The painting's connection to Hitler emerged only when researcher Schwartz approached the gallery recently. According to Almeroth-Williams, Schwartz spotted the painting in a photograph from a catalogue Hitler kept of his collection. The catalogue is now housed at the Library of Congress.

Gallery officials would not estimate the value of the Cranach painting, and neither would a spokesman for Christie's, the auction house. But Christie's said the record price for a Cranach painting at auction was $8.6 million in 1990, in London.

Cranach, suddenly, is something of a celebrity in London. Coincidentally, the Royal Academy of Arts has just opened a major exhibition of his work. Huge posters for the exhibition featuring a nude in the style of his Venus are displayed in London subway stations.