GALLERY URGES RETURN OF PAINTING STOLEN BY NAZIS

The director of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is urging Germany to return a Dutch masterpiece stolen by Nazi troops during the Second World War, dramatizing its absence by hanging a photo of the work with the label “Stolen”.

Eike Schmidt said in a New Year’s appeal that the still-life “Vase of Flowers” by Dutch artist Jan van Huysum is in the hands of a German family who hasn’t returned it despite numerous appeals. Instead, intermediaries for the family have demanded payment for its return to Italy. “The painting is already the inalienable property of the Italian State, and thus cannot be ‘bought,’” Schmidt said.

The oil painting had been part of the Pitti Palace collection in Florence from 1824 until the outbreak of the war.