The painting “Vaso di Fiori” (“Vase of Flowers”) by the Dutch artist Jan van Huysum is to be returned to the Palatine Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and his Italian counterpart Enzo Moavero will travel to Florence to mark the event.

The picture was stolen from the Florentine museum during the period of German occupation in the Second World War and had since been kept in Germany. Eike Schmidt, Director of the Uffizi Gallery, to which the Palazzo Pitti belongs, had been publicly campaigning for the return of the painting since January this year.

Thanks to the close and trust-based cooperation between the two foreign ministries and their ministers Maas and Moavero, the painting, one of the Dutch master’s greatest works, can now return to its original place, granted to it by Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, almost two hundred years ago.