One of the few independent experts to have seen the entire collection has now decided to speak out in Gurlitt’s defence. “Cornelius Gurlitt has not done anything wrong,” says Dr Sibylle Ehringhaus, an expert in 19th-century art and a provenance investigator based in Berlin. She reflects a German view that the sins of the father should not be visited on the son. “The pictures belong to him — the entire collection must be returned to him as soon as possible. The State has made a big mistake and it must admit it — and make up for it.”

Ehringhaus was one of three experts who received a telephone call in March 2012 from the authorities in Bavaria asking them to participate in a top-secret mission. A private collection of artworks had been discovered in the Schwabing district of northern Munich by tax inspectors investigating a routine VAT case. Would she come and take a look? Ehringhaus, who rarely gets the chance to see private collections as a whole, jumped at the chance.

The trio of experts was given just 48 hours to look though the entire treasure trove. “It was very well kept,” Dr Ehringhaus says. “Usually we know the museum collections and they are used, they are not as fresh, but here the quality is brilliant and fresh because it was in this private collection for 60 years. The heart certainly beat a little faster.” This contradicts the image presented by Focus, the German news magazine that broke the story in November of a collection rescued from a run-down apartment where it was stashed in folders and boxes on the same shelves as tins of food.