Ohio Couple Returns Nazi-Looted Baroque Painting to Poland
- September 29, 2015 13:19
A Baroque painting that has mostly resided in Ohio since World War II is returning to Poland. Krzysztof Lubieniecki's c. 1728 “Portrait of a Young Man” was taken from Poland's National Museum in Warsaw by the Nazis in 1944 and stashed away in an Austrian castle.
On Monday, the FBI's Columbus, Ohio, office returned the work to Polish officials in a ceremony.
“‘The Portrait of a Young Man’ was apparently later discovered by a U.S. serviceman while in Austria,” the FBI said in a statement. “The soldier is believed to have brought the artwork to the United States after his service abroad.”
After the serviceman died, the painting changed hands in Ohio. Decades later, a relative of the soldier researched the artwork and found that it was missing from Poland; he contacted authorities. By then the painting had been owned since the 1990s by art collectors Janis and John Bobb who agreed to return the work to Poland without compensation.
'We had enjoyed it for 20-some years,' Janis Bobb told the Columbus Dispatch. 'I think that we appreciate the fact that it should be back at the museum again.'
