Family can try to get back masterpiece

Germany with Lilly, saw a photo of the painting in a catalog and contacted him. He quickly learned it was hanging in the museum in Madrid.

“He was completely stunned because we thought the painting was gone,” his son, David, told The Associated Press last year.

He added that the family went through diplomatic channels to ask for the painting’s return but was rebuffed.

“What they basically said was, ‘Go ahead and sue us,’” he recalled angrily on Monday.

After Claude Cassirer died in 2010, his son took over the litigation. He said he’s hopeful Monday’s outcome will lead to the work’s return. He’s not sure what the family would do with it, although he said he believes it should be displayed publicly. It has been appraised at more than $30 million.

Thyssen-Bornemisza acquired the work for $275,000 in 1976 from a New York gallery owner. It had been sold and resold by various U.S. collectors before that.

The baron eventually turned his collection of more than 700 paintings over to Spain, which created a nonprofit foundation to run the museum it named for him.

“As the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza acquired the painting in good faith in 1976 and the foundation, in turn, acquired the painting in good faith in 1993 – where it has ever since been on display to the public – we remain confident that the foundation’s ownership of the painting will once again be confirmed,” Stauber said in an email Monday.

Claude Cassirer of San Diego is shown in 2005 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Cassirer, who died in 2010, filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles against the Spanish government and an affiliated museum demanding the return of an 1897 painting by famed...