Had it not been for the sharp eye of a museum curator, a French medieval sculpture of Saint Michael slaying the dragon, carved in alabaster and dating from the 1450’s, may have remained undetected in an English private collection.

Stolen from the church of Notre-Dame-du-Tertre in Châtelaudren, Côtes d’Armor in Brittany in 1969, the episode highlights what is possible when an academic, an auction house and a private collector share the same commitment to return a work of art whose true ownership is not disputed. 

Dr Lloyd de Beer, the British Museum's Project Curator of Medieval Collections, recognised the sculpture from an old photograph he saw while researching in the archives of the Museum of Antiquities in Rouen. Opening a Châtelaudren file, he found documents about an ‘Altarpiece for the Life of Christ and the Virgin’ including a photograph of the Saint Michael sculpture. Although marked ‘stolen in 1969’, he recognised the sculpture immediately as one he knew from a private collection in England. He contacted the owner, who had bought the sculpture from Sotheby’s, London in 1998 for almost £6,000. The owner wanted to do the right thing and return the work to Châtelaudren and so turned to Sotheby’s to help organise its return.

Acknowledging it should never have been sold through the auction house in the first place, Sotheby’s stepped up to reimburse the buyer and to organise its return through the French Ministry of Culture. “We are pleased to have been able to assist in facilitating a resolution satisfactory to those involved,” said a Sotheby’s spokeswoman to the Daily Telegraph ..

The sculpture is one of seven panels made by British sculptors in a Midlands workshop, which were exported to form the altarpiece at Notre-Dame-du-Tertre. All seven panels were stolen in 1969. Three others were recovered from Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Photo; English Alabaster sculpture of St Michael, 1450s

Courtesy of Ministry of Culture/Judith Kagan