Vase of Flowers (van Huysum)

The painting was in the collection of the Galleria Palatina in Palazzo Pitti in Florence until its 1943 theft by the retreating Wehrmacht following the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943.

[2] An interest in botany arose in Holland nearing the end of the 1500s and caused an increase in the demand for floral still lifes.

[1] Eike Schmidt, the Director of the Uffizi Gallery, launched an appeal to return the painting in January 2019 and hung a reproduction of the piece labeled stolen in Italian, German and English in its former place in Palazzo Pitti.

German minister of foreign affairs Heiko Maas personally handed the picture to his Italian counterpart Enzo Moavero Milanesi in Florence.

Since the statute of limitations in a case of theft would have run out according to German law, the return is viewed by journalists as a sign of European solidarity in times of political instability, especially in light of the crisis of migration and refugees on the Mediterranean Sea during late spring and summer 2019.