To understand what this means, we need only go to Turin.

In the tower bedroom at Villa Cerruti, beside the bed of collector Francesco Federico Cerruti, hung a fifteenth-century Madonna by Jacopo del Sellaio. Cerruti had bought it in 1987. He loved it so much that he wanted it close to him while he slept.

Before him, however, the painting had had another home. In Vienna, in the collection of the Jewish Unger family. Their youngest daughter, Grete, remembered it from her childhood. Then came persecution, flight and the seizure of their artworks. The Madonna disappeared, and for decades the family could not find it.

When researchers at Castello di Rivoli reconstructed its provenance, the Cerruti Foundation began discussions with the heirs. A financial settlement was reached in 2020. The painting remains in the collection, but its history is now shared with visitors.

Not every case ends in an agreement.

Milan’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna holds Monsieur Arnaud on Horseback by Édouard Manet. The painting once belonged to Max Liebermann, the German Jewish painter who died in 1935. That year, his wife sold it. Two years had already passed since Hitler came to power.

According to Katharina Hüls-Valenti, a provenance researcher at the University of Parma, the sale took place under duress. The heirs have sought its restitution. The GAM, however, through its curator Paola Zatti, maintains that there is insufficient evidence to establish that Liebermann’s wife was forced to sell.

The museum has agreed to display a label explaining the painting’s provenance and the historical context of its sale.

A label may seem like very little. For now, it is what the parties have agreed on.

The issue is also complicated for a very practical reason: how do you prove, ninety years later, that a sale was not freely made? There is not always a document that says so. And selling a painting while facing persecution is not necessarily the same as selling it under normal circumstances.

A commission would not magically solve these problems. It would take accessible archives, researchers, resources and time. And decisions that could leave museums, collectors and public authorities dissatisfied.

In Italy, we are used to reading about masterpieces recovered abroad by the Carabinieri’s Cultural Heritage Protection Command. We welcome these as victories, often rightly so. Less familiar is the idea that, sometimes, the country called upon to return a work might be our own.

Brera’s Romanino confronted us with that possibility fifteen years ago.

Today, the Manet is still at Milan’s GAM. The Mollicone bill is still before Parliament. And in the archives of Italian museums, there are provenance histories waiting to be researched.

We do not know how many paintings could be involved. That is one of the first things we need to establish.