The researchers essentially posted a missing notice for the drawings on Germany's Lost Art database in July 2017. Among these works of art were the Deutsch de la Meurthefamily's drawings.

Provenance researchers found that Cornelius Gurlitt's sister, Benita Gurlitt, had also inherited several works of art from their father. The four recently discovered drawings were not part of Cornelius Gurlitt's trove. In the span of 80 years, artworks can change frames, documents can be lost or forged, archives can be destroyed and titles of pieces can change, Baresel-Brand explained, and victims of the Holocaust may not have had proof of the objects they lost. 'Even though we have good funding and perfect researchers, even they sometimes can't clarify a provenance to say that this is a work that came from a family or not.' She added that she thinks the public has also become more aware of how vague the provenance of an art object can be even after a thorough investigation. 'With the Gurlitt art trove, the term 'provenance research' has become familiar to quite a lot of people, and I think that we created new awareness for younger generations about what happened in the Nazi era, how people were robbed and plundered,' Baresel-Brand told Live Science. The task force has faced some criticism over the slow pace of the investigation.

So far, only six works have been restituted, including a portrait of a woman stolen from Jewish French politician Georges Mandel in Paris, identified last year by a repair in the canvas and on public view again in Berlin. When news of the trove became public in 2013, the German government launched a task force to research the provenance, or origins, of the art, to determine if any of the 1,566 pieces were looted or unethically acquired during the Nazi regime. German authorities confiscated the art from Cornelius Gurlitt's Munich apartment and another apartment in Salzburg, Austria, in 2012. Hildebrand Gurlitt was also one of just four dealers approved to sell off art considered 'degenerate' because it was modern, 'un-German,' or made by Jews and communists. The man had inherited the collection from his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, a dealer who worked with the Nazis to acquire art for planned museums, such as Hitler's never-realized Führermuseum in Linz. Inside, they found hundreds of pieces by famous artists, including Picasso, Monet, Renoir and Rodin. In 2012, German authorities entered the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, a reclusive elderly man who was under investigation for tax evasion.

San leonardo art trove looted art