Statue looted in Blitz turns up for sale

One of the few surviving medieval churches in the City is battling to regain possession of an ancient statue that was looted during the Blitz.

The early 17th-century alabaster bust was stolen from the nave of St Olave's - where diarist Samuel Pepys is buried - after it suffered two direct hits on April 17, 1941.

It disappeared for 70 years but churchwardens were tipped off by the Museum of London that it had turned up for auction, with an estimated price of £70,000.

The seller - a Northern European ecclesiastical dealer - insists that he acquired it in good faith more than seven years ago from a Kent dealer, whom he now cannot trace.

Auctioneers Dreweatts have withdrawn it from sale but the seller is rejecting calls to hand it to the church in Hart Street and declined to talk to the Evening Standard. The statue, which dates from 1614, is a sculpted and painted portrait of Dr Peter Turner, a botanist and physician at St Bart's Hospital. It survived the Great Fire.

St Olave's, with 90 per cent of its original stonework reconstructed in the early Fifties, never put anything in its place, believing that it would turn up. The statue is currently with Dreweatts. Stephan Ludwig, the firm's executive chairman, said: "We will not return it without this question being resolved. We've no interest in acquiring a liability to the church or to him [the seller] He is well known to us. We have no reason to believe that he acquired it any way questionably."

The Art Loss Register, which liaises with the police and art trade in tracking down stolen artworks, has responded to the church's plight by waiving its fees to act on its behalf. Its lawyer, Christopher A. Marinello, said the statue "belongs back in the church" because of the circumstances of the looting and St Olave's cultural significance.

The ALR said the seller will not hand the statue back unless he recovers his cost. The issue of ownership is a grey area because the theft was never recorded amid the Blitz chaos.

St Olave's rector, the Rev Oliver Ross, said of the looting: "At a time when the nation was going through such trauma, someone couldn't rise above their baser instincts." Manager Phil Manning said the statue's return "would be of huge significance to the church".