This Fontebasso painting was among a lot of four that Richard Neumann sold under duress in 1941 to Hugo Engel, the Paris agent for Karl Haberstock, the Berlin-based art dealer with close ties to Nazi party leaders. The works were purchased for the collection of the Fuhrermuseum, which Hitler hoped to fill with what he perceived to be the greatest masterpieces of European art. The Musees Nationaux Recuperation records for the painting also list Dr. Lili Frohlich-Bume as the purchaser, which is impossible as she had, as an Austrian Jew, been living in living in exile in London since the Anschluss. Dr. Frohlich-Bume had server as an advisor to Dr. Neumann and also worked as a gallerist. It is likely that he had bought the painting from her before the war.

Francesco Fontebasso
mid-18th century