PARIS (AFP) – French police were probing theft accusations linked to the sale of valuable stained glass that once adorned Notre-Dame, with auction house Sotheby’s insisting it had done everything by the book.
Two stained glass pieces which disappeared from the landmark cathedral in Paris in 1862 went on the block at Sotheby’s more than a century and a half later, in 2015.
One of the stained glass pieces represents an angel holding a candle, and the other an angel holding a censer. Their diameter is about 40 centimetres.
The Sotheby’s house sold them in 2015, one for EUR123,000 and the other for EUR111,000.
A French association, Lumiere sur le Patrimoine (Light on Heritage), specialising in investigating cases of possibly stolen goods at public sales, alleges that the pieces had been robbed from Notre-Dame, and on Wednesday filed a legal complaint for theft, and for the handling of stolen goods. French prosecutors told AFP they had launched a police investigation for an initial analysis of the allegations.
The pieces, believed to date back to the 13th Century, were created as a pair, and part of the cathedral’s main rose window on the northern side of its transept.
Sotheby’s said at the time of the sale that they were believed to have been taken down by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, a famous architect in charge of the cathedral’s restauration, in 1862 and first sold by a stained glass restorer called Edouard Didron sometime between 1877 and 1905.
Yesterday Sotheby’s said it had respected the law and regulations at the 2015 auction.
“Before putting an item up for sale we proceed to all the research, diligence and controls necessary to ensure that there is no legal obstacle to the sale,” it said in an e-mail to AFP.
