From the left: Douglas Greene - Vice Ambassador of USA in Poland, Bogdan Zdrojewski – minister of Culture and National Heritage, Michael Shea – Attaché Homeland Security Investigations, Office for International Cases, David Riccio – vice Attaché Homeland Security Investigations, Małgorzata Omilanowska – vice minister Culture and National Heritage, Jacek Miler – director of the Department of National Heritage in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Photo - Danuta MatlochThe painting, “St. Philip Baptising A Servant Of Queen Kandaki” by the well known German artist, Johann Conrad Seekatz, and stolen from the National Museum in Warsaw during the Second World War, was returned to Poland from the USA. On 12 February 2014, the Minister of Culture, Bogdan Zdrojewski, handed the picture over to the Director of the National Museum in Warsaw, Dr Agnieszka Morawińska. The recovered painting is an oil painting on tinplate presenting a characteristic theme from the Acts of the Apostles. The painter was a respected German artist who painted in the 18th century in Germany, as a court artist in Darmstadt.

The picture came from the collection of Piotr Fiorentini (1791-1858), a Polish officer, civil servant and collector, who left his collection to the School of Fine Art in Warsaw. Next, the painting ended up in the collection of the Museum of Fine Art, which went on to become the National Museum in Warsaw. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the painting was exhibited in the gallery in its temporary location on Wierzbowa St. Up until the outbreak of the Second World War, the painting was in the museum building. Its fortunes during the war are unknown. It is thought that it stayed in the museum until 1944. After the German army took Warsaw, the procedure of looting and destruction of works of art began and lasted throughout the occupation. The looting reached its peak in the first year of the war 1939-40 and also after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising in October 1944. It was particularly in this second period that many monuments were destroyed or stolen. Among them was probably the painting by Johann Conrad Seekatz.  “St. Philip Baptising A Servant Of Queen Kandaki” was conveyed to Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski by the Americans on 6th February 2014 in the Polish Consulate in New York.

The recovery of the painting was possible thanks to cooperation between the governments of Poland and the USA, in other words, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Polish Embassy in Washington and the US Homeland Security Investigations, to be exact.In 2011, as a result of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations, it was established that  the painting had been sold at an auction house in New York in 2006 and then ended up in a gallery in London. An expert delegation from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage went to London and confirmed that the painting was indeed on the list of Polish Wartime Losses. On the basis of documentation prepared by the ministry, the complicated administrative-legal procedure was started allowing for the painting to be returned to the USA and then conveyed to Poland. Two years ago, thanks to the joint efforts of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the HSI, two paintings by Julian Falat were returned to Poland; "Naganka na polowaniu w Nieświeżu” (Hunting Chase in Nieswiezu) and „Przed polowaniem w Rytwianach” (Before the hunt in Rytwiany), which were found in 2006 in New York auction houses.