5-7-2023 (TOKYO) A painting looted by Nazi Germany from a Polish aristocrat in 1940 has been discovered in Japan and returned to Poland, according to the Polish Embassy in Japan and a Tokyo-based art auction company. The painting, titled “Madonna with Child” by Italian Baroque-Era painter Alessandro Turchi, was handed into the Polish Embassy in Tokyo in late May at no cost to Poland.
While it is not clear how the painting came into possession of its former Japanese owner, the artwork had been missing since the 1990s after it was put up for auction in New York, according to Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
Mainichi Auction Inc. in Tokyo said it received a request from the painting’s former owner to sell it at an auction in the fall of 2021 and posted a photograph of it on their website, valuing the artwork at around 3 million yen ($21,000).
However, the company was contacted by the Polish ministry before the auction, which was scheduled for late January 2022, after they noticed that some details of the painting did not match those shown in an old photograph of the looted artwork believed to have been taken in 1939 or 1940.
A Polish team of experts subsequently visited Japan to confirm that the painting was authentic and had been looted during the Nazi occupation. An ultraviolet scan revealed that part of the original had been painted over.
The embassy said that it was the first time that a work of art taken from Poland during the Nazi occupation had been discovered in the Far East. Mainichi Auction’s official, Yoshiaki Onoyama, who negotiated with the former Japanese owner for the painting’s return, said: “There was no financial incentive for us, but I think we got the job done.”
