WWII Nazi-looted painting returns to Poland

Culture minister Bogdan Zdrojewski with painting in Warsaw, Wednesday: photo - PAP/Tomasz Gzell

‘Saint Philip Baptizing a Servant of Queen Kandaki’ by Johann Conrad Seekatz was handed over to the director of the Museum Agnieszka Morawinska by the Minister of Culture, Bogdan Zdrojewski, who brought the painting from the United States a few days ago.

Originally owned by Piotr Fiorentini, a Polish officer and art collector, it was donated to the Warsaw School of Arts, from where it was transferred to the Museum of Fine Arts (as of 1863 the National Museum).

The painting is believed that the work was looted by the Germans in 1944 but resurfaced in 2006, when it was offered for sale by a New York auction house under another title and attributed to another painter.

The work then found itself in a London gallery, where it was located by Polish experts and from where it was recovered by US officials after a seizure order filed in 2012.

The value of Seekatz’s work is estimated at about 60,000 euros.

During a ceremony at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Bogdan Zdrojewski had some warm words to say about the professionalism of the Homeland Security Investigations in the United States, whose experts came to Warsaw for the occasion.

A database of Polish war-time art losses contains almost 63, 000 items, including close on 7, 000 works by Polish painters (Aleksander Gierymski, Jan Matejko, Jacek Malczewski, Stanisław Wyspiański) and 7, 500 canvasses by foreign artists.

The latter group includes Raphael’s ‘Portrait of a Young Man’, looted by the Germans from the Czartoryski collection in Kraków.

In recent years 26 paintings have been recovered and returned to Poland.

The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage is currently making efforts to secure the return of 46 works of art stolen from Polish collections during World War Two. (mk/pg)