The Mimara Museum, opened in Zagreb in 1987, is based on a collection of over 3,500 items donated by Ante Topic Mimara (1898-1987) to the state. This voluminous gift is, however, greatly burdened by the unexplained provenance of a number of artworks, as the information on their previous owners and the circumstances of acquisition are generally missing. Recent research has shown that Topic's earliest acquisitions were made in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1967, he donated a small group of artworks he had collected to the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) in Zagreb. For a considerable number of these paintings, the circumstances in which he acquired them on the art market of the Third Reich, creating his collection, have been clarified. This paper brings some details concerning the earlier provenance of six artworks at the Mimara Museum, aimed at supplementing our knowledge on Topic's mechanisms of art acquisition. In the auction catalogues from the 1930s, two paintings from the Mimara Museum have been identified: The Virgin and Child (Fig. 1) by Giuliano Bugiardini is reproduced in the 1935 catalogue of the auction house Hugo Helbing, while in the following year, in the catalogue of the auction house Lepke, one finds listed the triptych Christ's Descent into Limbo (Fig. 3), painted by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch and known in several versions. Although it is not reproduced there, the triptych's dimensions and the integration of the central image with the text on the wings fully correspond to the described work. The Painter's Atelier from the donation to the Strossmayer Gallery has been noticed earlier as listed for the same auction, and the presence of several works owned by Topic at the same auction- which is the case more than once - supports the conclusion that the acquisitions were made at that time. In the mid-1940s, we learn from a report by Rene F.P. de Beaufort (1889-1969) that Topic bought two paintings from Karl Arndt of Hersbriick. An analysis of the sources has established that one of them was Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Fig. 5) by Constant Troyon, which stands out as a unique example among the artworks of known location for which there is archival data on Topic's direct acquisition. Before the end of 1945, the painting was "willingly sold" to Arndt by the Dutch art dealer Dirk Albert Hoogendijk (1895-1975). During the war years, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout's Ruth and Boaz (Fig. 6), a painting with richly documented history during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, was brought to the Third Reich and later to Yugoslavia from the Netherlands. In the 18th century, it was in the collection of Frans van de Velde (dagger 1774), from where it was auctioned in Amsterdam as part of his legacy in 1774 and bought by the graphic artist and art dealer Yver. It was later exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of 1879 in London, for which it was borrowed from Earl Cadogan. Around 1940, it is documented at the Kunsthandel D. Katz in Dieren, from where it was most likely directly included in the collection of the industrialist and collector Jacques Hedemann (1879-1948). Following the occupation of the Netherlands, Hedeman had to hand it over to the "robbery bank" of Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. in Amsterdam, where it fell into the hands of the Berlin art dealer Curt Reinheldt in 1943. It was through his mediation that the painting reached the German market, where Topic apparently bought it in the late 1940s. In 1950, the painting was brought to Yugoslavia as part of Topic's acquisitions made in the service of the state and Josip Broz Tito. In the late 1940s and in 1950, Topic collaborated intensively with the Yugoslav state leadership and participated in the process of fabricated restitutions of artworks. In June 1949, he sent 166 works of art to Yugoslavia from the Central Collecting Point in Munich. The "restituted" works of art were handed over and taken over by the state commission in Belgrade, so it stays unclear how two glass objects (Figs. 9 and 10) entered the Mimara Museum from Topic's possession.
