Nazis posing with art in Venice, Italy. Photo: Wikipedia.

Los Angeles Times – The Norton Simon Museum was dealt another legal setback Thursday in its bid to hold onto prized 16th century paintings of Adam and Eve that were looted by the Nazis during World War II and have hung in its galleries in Pasadena since the 1970s.

In a ruling in US District Court in Los Angeles, Judge John Walter denied the museum’s motion to dismiss Marei Von Saher’s lawsuit that seeks the return of the paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Painted on a pair of wooden panels around 1530, they depict a nude Adam and Eve holding forbidden fruit at the biblical moment when they succumbed to temptation in the Garden of Eden.

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