Painting, stolen by Nazi soldier, is back in Florence museum

A Dutch still-life painting, stolen by retreating Nazis and sent by a German soldier as a present to his wife, came back to a Florence museum on Friday, thanks largely to a relentless campaign by Uffizi Galleries’ director, a German.

foreign ministers of German and Italy were on hand Friday at Palazzo Pitti, a Renaissance palace that is part of Uffizi Galleries, for unveiling of “Flower Vase,” a masterpiece by Jan van Huysum, an early 18th-century artist whose exquisitely detailed still-life works were highly sought in his day.

Uffizi director Eike Schmidt earlier this year urged his native country to return work. He h posted on a gallery wall three labels where painting h hung before being taken during World War II: “stolen,” labels re in Italian, English, and German.

His homeland, Schmidt said at time, h a “moral duty” to return work.

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Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero hailed “civic and moral cour of a German director of an Italian museum” in pursuing painting’s return. As did his German counterpart, Moavero hailed happy ending, saying it was achieved through “real Europeanism, of concrete facts” and t just words.

He revealed to reporters that painting’s return was discussed, among or matters, during bilateral talks between Italy and Germany.

“Flower Vase” is so realistic it has been likened to a photograph. Van Huysum used a magnifying glass to study his subjects. Ripples are visible in insects’ transparent wings, to name just one striking detail on returned painting.

painting was acquired in 1824 by a grand duke of Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, which followed Medicis in residing in palace in Florence.

Shortly after outbreak of World War II, palace’s artworks were packed for safekeeping into wooden crates and moved from villa to villa. When Germany army was retreating, crates were ded to or war booty and eventually ended up in Bolza, an Alpine city near Austria. re crate containing “Flower Vase” was opened, and in July 1944, a German soldier sent painting to his wife in Germany.

Minister Moavero quoted soldier as writing instructions to his wife to “put it in a gilded frame.”

painting’s whereabouts appeared to be a mystery until a few weeks after fall of Berlin Wall in 1989. Starting in 1991, German family repeatedly tried to sell painting to Italy via intermediaries, “threatening to give it to a third party or even destroy it if a ransom wasn’t paid,” Italian culture ministry said. latest approach for money was me to Uffizi in 2016, it said.

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German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass thanked Schmidt for campaigning so passionately for painting’s return. “Here is its place, here is where it belongs,” he said.

At a time of tensions among many European Union allies over migrant issues, Maas saw inspiration in successful artwork diplomacy. He likened an EU “without “diversity, without solidarity” to a “museum without paintings on display, a vase without flowers.”