French police probe UK sale of ‘lost’ Notre-Dame stained glass

French police were on Thursday 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.

Published: 14 September 2023 14:05 CEST

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 €123,000 and the other for €111,000.

A French association, Lumière sur le Patrimoine (Light on Heritage), specialising in investigating cases of possibly stolen goods at public sales, alleges that the pieces had been stolen 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 restoration, in 1862 and first sold by a stained glass restorer called Edouard Didron sometime between 1877 and 1905.

On Thursday, 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 email to AFP.

The auction house said it had obtained all official authorisations, including export licences, and notified experts and museums.

Sotheby’s said it had not been contacted by the association filing the complaint.

Similar pieces were currently in the possession of the Art and History museum in Geneva, it said.

Notre-Dame, one of the French capital’s most famous monuments, is currently being restored after its roof went up in flames in 2019.

Its spire, which toppled in the blaze, will rise again before the 2024 summer Olympics in Paris, the new chief of the mammoth reconstruction project, Philippe Jost, said Thursday.

Towering 100 metres above ground level, the wooden spire will already be visible from the end of this year, gradually emerging from scaffolding as its roofing is attached, he said.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.