French association wants US museums to return Rouen Cathedral windows
A French heritage association has appealed to authorities for the return of six stained-glass windows that were allegedly stolen from Rouen Cathedral over a century ago and are now housed in three museums in the United States.
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The president of Paris-based heritage association Lumière sur le Patrimoine, Philippe Machicote, filed a complaint in mid-December with the Rouen public prosecutor, who now has two months left to make a decision.
The complaint for “concealment of theft” concerns the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn (Pennsylvania), the Worcester Art Museum (Massachusetts) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
Machicote told regional newspaper Ouest-France the windows, which he describes as "imprescriptible and inalienable national treasures", should be given back to France.
Proving provenance
The thousand-year-old Rouen Cathedral is the tallest of its type in France. Among its valuable relics, the missing windows crafted between 1200 and 1210 illustrate the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, a legend of persecuted Christian soldiers who fell asleep in a cave and woke up two centuries later.
According to Machicote, the panels were stolen some time between the late 19th and early 20th century. He says they were smuggled through the Parisian market, "passed into the hands of American collectors and, after their deaths, ended up in museums".
As evidence, Machicote points to a 1972 article by art historian Jean Lafond, who in 1931 noticed that windows he had inventoried 20 years earlier were no longer in the cathedral's collection.
"American museums have known since 1972 that these are stolen stained glass windows," Machicote claims.
The Met's online records indicate that the windows now in its collection originally came from Rouen Cathedral before being sold by a French dealer in the 1920s to wealthy American collector Raymond Pitcairn.
The Glencairn Museum also published an essay in 2019 detailing the windows' prior movements, in which it says several panels were smuggled out of storage at the cathedral and placed on the French art market – including at least one now at the Met.
Worcester Art Museum told the Boston Globe that it takes "curatorial and ethical responsibilities towards its collection very seriously" but has "never been contacted regarding this work of art".
It says it acquired the windows at a public sale in 1921, adding: "If the Museum receives information or a claim, we will consider it carefully and in compliance with best practices."
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Restitution efforts
In a separate case last September, Machicote alleged that Sotheby’s auction house had sold two stained-glass windows from Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral in 1862, but the prosecutor’s office did not recognise the appeal.
As for the Rouen windows, Machicote said he hoped to see museums agree to return them "in the same way that Egypt has already been able to recover 29,000 stolen objects, that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles has returned pieces to Greece".
In recent years the Met and other prestigious museums have agreed to return looted works as part of the fight against international antiquities trafficking.
Museums in France are also under pressure to re-examine their collections.
Last July France passed a law making it easier for state-owned museums to return works of art seized by Nazi Germany during World War II to their Jewish owners or heirs.
And dozens of objects looted by French colonial forces in West Africa have already been returned to countries including Benin and Senegal.
France and Germany recently announced a joint fund to research the provenance of African objects in national museums, opening the door to their restitution.
In December, parliament also passed legislation making it easier for French museums to return human remains.
(with newswires)
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