«I am really proud to have in my room my Guercino and my Cavallino». Ludwig Pollak and The dream of Joseph. On the intricate Provenance of a Neapolitan Baroque Paintin
Federica De Giambattista, Katharina Hüls-Valenti, Hansjörg Pötzsch
The dream of Joseph from the workshop of the Neapolitan Baroque painter Bernardo Cavallino (1616-1656) has been part of the collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig since 1963. In 2021 the museum decided to list it on the Lost Art Database as suspected of being Nazi-looted art; since then, the painting has been subject to intensive research, given its intricate provenance related to the renowned Prague Jewish archaeologist, art dealer and collector Ludwig Pollak (1868-1943), who had been deported from Rome to Auschwitz in autumn 1943 and whose prominent art collection was largely dispersed during the Nazi-fascist period. By reconstructing the intricate biography of the painting and illustrating the persisting provenance gaps and open questions that relate to the fate of Pollak’s art collection, the paper aims to discuss the frequent challenges in the field of provenance research as well as to highlight the importance of transnational cooperation and transparent communication amongst international scholars to overcome such obstacles.