Court Seems to Boost Claim to 'Adam' and 'Eve' at Norton Simon Museum

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
By Mike Boehme

"Adam" and "Eve," a diptych of paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 
was created around 1530. (Norton Simon Art Foundation)

CALIFORNIA---The Bible tells us that all the world's troubles began with Adam and Eve taking fateful bites of forbidden fruit. The German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder captured the moment in 1530, painting "Adam" and "Eve" on paired wooden panels that hang amid the stately calm of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. They are the prize in a bitter seven-year court battle over who should own them: the museum that has shown them since the 1970s or heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch Jewish art dealer who lost them to the invading Nazis in 1940. A 2-1 ruling last month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals settled nothing, but it did keep Marei von Saher's case against the museum alive after it had been dismissed by a U.S. district court judge in Los Angeles. [link]