QUICK TAKES - May 7, 2009

New York art dealer Richard Feigen on Wednesday returned an Italian baroque painting to the heirs of Max Stern, a Jewish gallery owner who was forced to sell the work before fleeing Nazi Germany 72 years ago.

The picture of St. Jerome in the wilderness, attributed to Ludovico Carracci, shows the bare-chested saint turning from his book as two angels greet him. Feigen bought the work in 2000 at Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne, the same auction house that sold the contents of Stern’s gallery before the war.

Feigen said he began to wonder about the painting when he read reports two weeks ago about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials seizing a Dutch Old Master portrait sold in the Stern auction from Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts in New York. After establishing that the Carracci work was indeed part of the same forced sale, Feigen decided to return it to the Max Stern Estate.