NEW YORK, NY.- A Pennsylvania museum is relinquishing a valuable 16th century portrait attributed to Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop after reaching a settlement with descendants of a German Jewish couple who fled the Nazis before World War II.

The Allentown Art Museum agreed to give up “Portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony” after a claim made by the family of Henry and Hertha Bromberg, who fled Germany in 1938.

As part of the settlement, the work, an oil on panel dated to around 1534, is to be sold at the Christie’s old master sale in New York in January. The proceeds are to be divided between the museum and the Bromberg heirs, but the parties have not disclosed details of the arrangement.

“This work of art entered the market and eventually found its way to the museum only because Henry Bromberg had to flee persecution from Nazi Germany,” Max Weintraub, the museum’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “That moral imperative compelled us to act.”

Bromberg, a judge in a magistrate’s court in Hamburg, Germany, had inherited the portrait and other works from his father’s collection. But he and his wife sold off artworks as they left Europe, first traveling to Switzerland, then France before sailing to the United States in 1939. They eventually settled in Pennsylvania, not far from Allentown.

“While being persecuted and on the run from Nazi Germany, Henry and Hertha Bromberg had to part with their artworks by selling them through various art dealers, including the Cranach,” said Imke Gielen, a lawyer for the Bromberg heirs.

The Cranach and other works were sold to the F. Kleinberger Gallery in Paris, according to the museum, which acquired the painting from a New York gallery in 1961.

The agreement, resolved amicably, by all accounts, involved one of the more difficult issues that arise in restitution claims as the parties confronted the question of what level of duress the Brombergs were under at the time of the sale.

Both sides agreed the painting was sold as part of the desperate efforts by the couple to raise necessary money to flee Nazi persecution. But the parties differed in their view as to whether the painting was sold before the couple left the dire circumstances of Jewish life within Nazi Germany, as the Bromberg descendants believe likely, or afterward, which a lawyer for the museum offered as a more probable scenario.

The lack of certainty over where the sale took place paved the way for compromise rather than outright full restitution, according to a lawyer for the museum, Nicholas M. O’Donnell.

“It’s a case where the museum really was motivated by the ethical code on American museums on these issues and the ethical compulsion to reach a compromise where possible,” O’Donnell said. He said the museum had first received the claim from the family in 2022, and officials said they believed it was the first time the museum had restituted Nazi looted art.

The Bromberg descendants include their grandchildren and a close family relation, who live in the United States and Europe.

In recent years, two other works once belonging to the Bromberg collection have been returned to them by the French state: a 16th century portrait attributed to the school of Joos van Cleve and a triptych attributed to the workshop of 16th century Antwerp artist Joachim Patinir.

Gielen, the lawyer for the descendants, said the family had also identified two other artworks that had been in private collections and had reached agreements with their owners. The family heirs are still seeking about 80 artworks that they believe were lost by their relatives because of Nazi persecution.

In a statement, the members of the family said, “We are pleased that another painting from our grandparents’ art collection was identified and are satisfied that the Allentown Art Museum carefully and responsibly checked the provenance of the portrait of George the Bearded, Duke of Saxony and the circumstances under which Henry and Hertha Bromberg had to part with it during the Nazi period.”

They said the Brombergs first settled in New Jersey, before moving, several years later, to Pennsylvania to be near one of their sons. “This makes the fair and just solution for the painting in the Allentown Art Museum particularly special,” they said.

Christie’s said it could not yet give an accurate pre-auction valuation of the work since it was still determining the proper attribution of the painting. Marc Porter, chair of Christie’s Americas, said in a statement that its research was “leading to a tentative conclusion that this was painted by Cranach with assistance from his workshop.”

Cranach also painted the cousin of the subject of the Allentown painting, John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony. That portrait sold in 2018 for $7.7 million, the most ever paid at auction for a portrait by Cranach of a single person. A diptych portrait he painted has sold for more. The addition of an artist’s workshop to a painting’s attribution would typically lower the price. The top auction price for a work cataloged as being by “Lucas Cranach and Workshop” was set in 2009 at around $1.1 million.

“It’s exciting whenever a work by a rare and important Northern Renaissance master like Lucas Cranach the Elder becomes available, especially as the result of a just restitution,” Porter said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.