A stolen painting returned to the Musée de Dole

5/7/24 - Restitution - Dole, Musée des Beaux-Arts - Earlier this year, the Kâ-Mondo auction house was asked to sell a French Renaissance portrait. It didn’t take long for the Turquin firm, in charge of its appraisal, to attribute this painting - it must be said that it is signed and dated 1561 on the back by its creator, Étienne de Martellange - and above all to quickly realise, by consulting the Joconde database of the Musées de France, that it belonged to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole and had been reported as ’missing’ because it had not been found during an inspection in 2010. The work, which was known only from a black and white photograph, was strangely unidentified and remained anonymous. It had therefore been stolen from the museum when it was not yet in its current location,…