RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- The rightful owners of a prized painting stolen by the Nazis have agreed to sell it back to the art museum that returned it to them at a fraction of its estimated value.
The North Carolina Museum of Art will pay $600,000 for the painting "Madonna and Child in a Landscape" by German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder under terms of an agreement negotiated over six months.Owned by sisters Marianne and Cornelia Hainisch of Vienna, Austria, the painting's values was estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million by Sotheby's auction house.
The Gestapo seized the work in 1940 from the sisters' great uncle, Philipp Gomperz, a wealthy Viennese Jew. It was bequeathed to the museum in 1964 after changing hands several times.