This is a brief excerpt from the document you requested from IFAR’s Art Law & Cultural Property Database.

Case Summary

Tajan v. Pavia & Harcourt

Tajan v. Pavia & Harcourt, 693 N.Y.S.2d 544 (N.Y. App. Div. 1999), appeal denied without opinion, 724 N.E.2d 764 (1999).

Précis
An eighteenth-century painting by Bernardo Bellotto was stolen from Enzo Colombo’s villa in Florence in 1981. In 1985, the painting resurfaced at auction in New York, where U.S. Customs seized the work and turned it over to Pavia & Harcourt, a New York law firm representing Colombo’s American estate. In 1997, the painting was transferred to Enzo’s son Davide, who sold the work to Wombaca, a Panamanian corporation. Consigned to the French auction house Etude Tajan, the painting was once again seized . . . .






Click here to subscribe to IFAR's Art Law & Cultural Property Database to access this and other documents about U.S. and international legislation and case law concerning the acquisition, authenticity, export, ownership, and copyright of art objects.