An 11-year-long legal dispute over a prized Amedeo Modigliani painting looted during World War II has concluded in a loss for billionaire art dealer David Nahmad and his family, marking an unlikely restitution victory for the heirs of its original Jewish owner.
A New York judge ruled this week that Seated Man With a Cane (1918) rightfully belongs to the estate of Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer who left the portrait behind under duress while fleeing Paris ahead of the Nazi occupation. The court found that the painting was illicitly seized and illegitimately transferred, rejecting the Nahmads’ longstanding argument that its provenance, or ownership history, was unclear.
“Oscar Stettiner owned or at a minimum had a superior right of possession of the painting prior to its unlawful seizure,” Judge Joel M. Cohen wrote, as first quoted by the New York Times, “and he never voluntarily relinquished it.”
The judge added that David Nahmad and the Nahmad holding company “failed to raise any material issues of fact, and offered no evidence identifying anyone other than Mr. Stettiner as the owner of the painting or suggesting that he voluntarily relinquished it.”
The ruling caps an 11-year legal campaign led by Stettiner’s grandson, Philippe Maestracci, who has sought to reclaim the painting since 2011, alongside Mondex, a company specializing in the recovery of looted art. Valued at more than $25 million, Seated Man With a Cane has been held since 1996 by International Art Center, a Nahmad family–linked holding company that purchased it at a London auction.
In court, both parties centered their arguments on a well-worn question in Nazi-looted art disputes: whether the painting now held by the defendants could be definitively identified as the same work once owned by Oscar Stettiner. The Nahmads’ attorneys argued that omissions and inconsistencies in the provenance created credible doubt. The New York court disagreed, finding the evidence overwhelmingly favored the claimant and citing a wealth of prewar exhibition records and postwar restitution filings tying the painting to Stettiner.
The judge also rejected a provenance narrative attached to the painting when it appeared at Christie’s in 1996, calling it flawed and misleading—whether by error or design—and noting a recurring issue in restitution cases where inaccurate provenance can obscure a work’s Nazi-looted origins.
The case was further complicated by the painting’s opaque ownership structure. For years, Nahmad maintained that it did not belong to him personally but to the offshore entity International Art Center. This position came under scrutiny after the 2016 Panama Papers leak revealed links between the Nahmad family and the holding company. The court acknowledged that Nahmad had acquired the painting in good faith in 1996, but its history of wartime looting reinforced the Stettiner family’s ownership claim.
“Our client, Mr. Maestracci, is overwhelmed with joy and the satisfaction that, after so many years, the quest of his grandfather has finally been fulfilled,” James Palmer, founder of Mondex, told the New York Times.
“We now look forward to Mr. Nahmad abiding by his promise to return the painting upon receiving the court’s order, which he has now received,” Palmer added.
