PratikshaShome
The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that a 16th-century painting known as Madonna with Child that is credited to the baroque painter Alessandro Turchi has returned to Poland after being stolen by Nazis during World War II.
The artwork, one of 600 pieces that have been returned to Poland since the war and discovered in Japan in 2022, represents only 0.9% of the approximately 660,000 pieces that were stolen from Occupied Poland between 1939 and 1945. At the Polish Embassy in Tokyo on Wednesday, it was formally returned.
Courtesy: ARTnews
According to the AP, Turchi’s Madonna with Child is among Poland’s top 521 most valuable works of art, according to the country’s cultural minister Piotr Glinski.
Unknown as to how it ended up in Japan, the painting was sold by a New York auction house in the late 1990s. The object’s origin reveals that Polish nobility Stanislaw Kostka-Potocki once had it. By 1823, Henryk Lubomirski of Przeworsk, another aristocratic collection, had it.
“More and more looted objects are showing up at auctions because the memory (of their past) has weakened and the people who are in possession of them now do not have the full knowledge or are unaware of where the artwork is coming from,” Agata Modzelewska, head of the ministry’s department for restitution of culture items, told The Associated Press.
According to the article, the picture was returned after discussions with Japan, its owner, and the Mainichi Auction Inc.
The demand for repatriation has gained international attention. Africa, India, China, Mexico, and Greece are a few of the nations that have been aggressively pursuing the return of plundered artwork and artefacts in recent years.
Source: ARTnews
