Looted during the war, the Francesco Guardi painting “Palace Stairs”, was returned to the Director of the National Museum in Warsaw, Agnieszka Morawinski. The Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bogdan Zdrojewski and the Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski attended the  ceremony, which took place on 3rd April 2014. The return of the painting is one of the most important, successfully completed restitutional cases of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.The ceremony where the Guardi painting was returnedThe Francesco Guardi painting “Palace Stairs” is an oil painting measuring 32.8cm x 25.8cm. Since 1949 it has been listed in successive publications of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, which show cultural property looted from Poland from 1939-1945. It was also registered in the database of objects lost as a result of the Second World War, which is run by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Since 1925, the painting belonged to the National Museum in Warsaw and until the outbreak of the war it adorned the gallery of foreign art. At the end of November 1939, the canvas was requisitioned and transported to the storehouse in the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow. It never returned to the museum. In 1943 it was brought to Hans Frank’s headquarters in Wawel and a year later, during the evacuation of the General Governor’s Office, it was taken to the castle in Sichow in Lower Silesia. The later fortunes of the painting are unknown to the Polish authorities.

On the basis of documents found a few years ago, it seems the painting was conveyed to the storehouse of cultural property in Wiesbaden and then to the Central Collecting Point in Munich. After the war the painting’s provenance was impossible to establish. So, instead of being returned to its rightful owner, the painting ended up at Heidelberg University as an object of unknown provenance. From 1958-59 attempts were made to establish the rightful owner of the painting, ending without success.  In 1980, during redecoration of the rector’s office, a decision was made to hand the “Palace Stairs” over, as a deposit, to the Kurpfalzische Museum in Heidelberg and then to the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart where it still is till today.

In September 2010, the Department of Cultural Heritage prepared a restitutional application, which was given to the National Gallery in Stuttgart, via the National Museum in Warsaw. On 5th October 2010, the museum was informed that the matter had been passed on to the Ministry of Science and Art in Baden-Württemberg, who then asked the Federal Republic of Germany Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their opinion. On 22nd November 2011, in answer to a letter from the Ministry of Culture to Mr Bernd Neumann, agent for Culture and Media of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Polish authorities were informed that the application would certainly be included in Polish-German talks regarding mitigating the effects of the second world war organised by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of both countries.

In May 2013 the case of the Guardi painting was sent for a second investigation to the law firm Raue LLP in Berlin. The Foreign Ministry was informed of the efforts to recover the painting. In connection with this information the Foreign Ministry invited the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to a meeting on 17 July 2013. During the talks the Foreign Ministry stated that it didn’t see any barriers for the efforts of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in this area.

At the same time, the law firm Raue LLP corresponded in the case with the German Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Culture in Baden-Württemberg and the National Gallery in Stuttgart. A breakthrough in the German standpoint occurred in January 2014. After a series of press reports in Germany, which was part of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage strategy, the interested institutions admitted that they have no right to keep hold of the painting. The German Foreign Ministry declared that they would support its return. The Ministry received confirmation in writing via the lawyer representing the Polish side, Peter Raue, who is in constant contact with both Lander and Federal institutions like  the National Gallery in Stuttgart, the Ministry of Culture in Baden-Württemberg, The German Foreign Ministry and consulting regularly with the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, regarding the contents of documents and direct conversations.

During a meeting between representatives of the Ministry of Culture and national Heritage and Dr Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, leader of the TaskForce group and long-term deputy to Minister Berndt Neumann on 7th February 2014, it was communicated that a decision had been reached as to the return of the “Palace Steps” by Francesco Guardi to Poland.

On 13th February 2014, information appeared on the Foreign Ministry website regarding a telephone conversation between Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, during which Minister Steinmeier informed minister Sikorski about the decision to return the painting to Poland. Then, on 28th March 2014, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage was informed that on 31st March the painting would be conveyed at a meeting in Berlin between the two ministers for Foreign Affairs.