Bellotto

In 1938, the Jewish department-store magnate Max Emden, who left Germany before the Nazis took power, sold three city views by the 18th-century painter Bernardo Bellotto to an art buyer for Hitler.

It said Emden’s financial predicament was “deliberately exploited by potential buyers” during extended sales negotiations and noted that Hitler’s chancellery purchased a painting “in the style of Bellotto” — a less valuable imitation — for a higher price a short while later.

Tinterow said that after the Monuments Men Foundation contacted him, he became aware the museum’s online provenance information about the painting was incorrect, because it conflated the provenance of both Emden’s and Moser’s Bellotto paintings.

But the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which ultimately came to possess the third Bellotto, has rejected the Emden heirs’ claims since 2007.

Part of Edsel’s issue with the Houston museum is that he does not think it did enough to track the history of its Bellotto, or is doing enough now to acknowledge the new evidence that suggests the work was once owned by Emden.