The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage is completing the restitution process regarding the Francesco Guardi painting “Palace Stairs” which had been looted from Poland during the Second World War. The piece can currently be found in the National Gallery in Stuttgart. The ministry has been working its return for many years and it is hoped that the painting will be back in Poland within the next few months. This is one of the most important restitution cases run by the Ministry of Culture.

Since 1949, Francesco Guardi’s painting has been listed in consecutive publications about cultural goods transported from Poland between 1939 and 1945. It was also registered in the database of wartime losses run by the Division for Looted Art. In 2010, the department of Cultural Heritage prepared a restitution application, which was submitted via the National Museum In Warsaw – the pre-war owner of the painting. After a few years of work, the case was passed on to the German lawyer, Peter Raue, who had represented the ministry during the recovery of The Jewess with oranges by Aleksander Gierymski and A Negress by Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz.

Among others, the daily, "Der Tagesspiegel", wrote about the Guardi case. German press reports, particularly in the context of the recently recovered works of art from Cornelius Gurlitt which had been looted by Nazis, as well as multiple appeals, conversations and efforts of the Polish Ministry of Culture regarding the recovery of the painting, brought about a breakthrough in the case. On 24th January last year, the previous secretary of state in the Ministry of Culture in Baden Wurttenburg, Juergen Walter, told the TV station 3Sat, that Poland could count on the return of the “Palace Stairs” by Francesco Gaudi, which had been stolen during the war by Germans. “We have no right to keep this work of art,” added the Green party politician. In his view, Poland could count on the fact that Germans “in the near future” would return the painting. It may return to Poland this year.

“Palace Stairs” by Francesco Gaudi is an oil painting measuring 32,8 x 25,8 cm. On 13 March 1925 it was bought by the National Museum in Warsaw from the collector Leon Kranc. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, the work was exhibited in the museum building at 15 Podwale St in Warsaw.In the summer of 1939, in the face of the approaching war, the painting was moved to the museum basement. Soon after the capture of Warsaw by the German army, the systematic requisitioning and transport of cultural goods started. At around the end of November 1939, the Francesco Guardi painting was transported to the storehouse of the Office of the Special Representative for Protection of Art and Cultural Goods in the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow and from there was transported to the headquarters of Hans Frank in Wawel Castle. One year later, during the evacuation of the General Governor’s Office it was transported, together with other valuable works, like yet to be recovered “The Portrait of a Young Man” by Raphael and “The Lady with an Ermine” by Leonardo Da Vinci, to the castle of Count Manfred v. Richtofen in Sichow in south Silesia. From that time the painting’s fortunes were unknown to the Polish authorities. On the basis of documents found in German archives, it seems the painting was conveyed to the storehouse of cultural property in Wiesbaden on 24th December and then to the Central Collecting Point in Munich. Instead of being returned to its rightful owner the painting ended up at Heidelberg University as an object of unknown provenance. In 1980, the “Palace Stairs” were handed over as a deposit to the Kurpfalzische Museum in Heidelberg and then to the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart where it still is till today.