BERLIN, GERMANY.- The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin presents the original frescoes of the church of Saint Coloma of Andorra. This is the first time these works can be seen after seventy years. The paintings portray Saint Mary, Saint Coloma, Saint Peter and an apostle, Christ, and the apostles. The paintings date from the 12th century. The works were discovered in the 1940’s among the war booty of the Third Reich. The works left the church in the 1930’s and went to the art market of Barcelona. Here there is a hole in the provenance of the works. After the Second World War they works reappear as part of the booty of the Third Reich.
In 1969 the works went to public museums in western Berlin and in 1989 the restoration of the works began.
The exhibition is titled “Roman Andorra” and was curated by French Sabine Pénot. She found out that the baron Jean Germain Léon Cassel, who was born in 1882 and was a banker and an art collector, purchased the frescoes in Barcelona in 1935. The baron was a Jew and stored the frescoes in his villas in the south of France. Around 1942 the Gestapo took the works under an operation called Aktion Berta, probably under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg. The Nazis stored the collection in Austria, but these frescoes were not in the collection. They were conserved in rolls. The public museums are now looking for the heirs of the baron.