Andrew Carnduff Ritchie (1907–1978) was a Scottish-born American art historian specialising in British 18th-century sculpture, a professor, museum director and post-World War II 'Monuments Man'.
[2] He retired from Yale in 1971, and then spent a year as Robert Sterling Clark Professor of Art History at Williams College in Massachusetts.
He went to Munich, the main collecting point for works of art that had been stolen by the Nazis and stored in salt mines in Austria.
He was helped in his task by the meticulous details the Nazis kept about the origin of each plundered art work down to the day it arrived at the salt mines and the number of the train that delivered it.
In addition, the art was very well conserved as the salt mines provided ideal storage with natural air conditioning and a steady temperature.
He locked himself in a sleeping compartment with the picture and a splendid picnic of pheasant and Burgundy supplied by a French colleague.
[18] In order to emphasise the separation of the Austrian state from Germany, Ritchie was tasked to return the whole Habsberg Treasure to Vienna.
Having requested some railway carriages to transport them, it was found that the packing cases – particularly that containing the 13th century coronation cope were too big for the train so a C-47 plane was commandeered instead.