•  Giovanni Maria Padovano (1493-1574)

Head of a Young Man, early 16 th century

White marble, 23 cm. high

This small sculpture, attributed to Giovanni Maria Padovano, was discovered in 1856 in the cellar of a house in the Old Town Market of Warsaw. In 1906, it was donated to the Society for the Protection of Historic Monuments, which in turn - eleven years later – conveyed it to the National Museum in Warsaw.

Art historians who studied the sculpture in the early 20 th century noted the resemblance of the Head of a Young Man to the head of one of the sons of the priest Laocoön in the famous Rhodian Group of Laocoön (dated 150-50 BC) excavated in Rome in 1506. The discovery fascinated many Renaissance artists. They may have included Giovanni Maria Padovano, an Italian artist who worked in Poland starting from the 1530s and was recognised as a leading sculptor of Polish Renaissance.

Before the war, the sculpture was stored at the National Museum. Lack of precise records makes it impossible to determine the date of its theft; it is accepted that it happened in 1940, though it cannot be ruled out that the looting took place after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It could not be found after the war and was listed in the catalogue Straty wojenne w dziedzinie rzeźby (War losses in sculpture) by Dariusz Kaczmarzyk, published in Warsaw in 1958.

Today, it is known that the sculpture found its way to Switzerland and was sold in Zurich in late 2001. The buyer was a well-known New York art dealer of Polish descent, owner of a top gallery. It may be supposed that he intended to resell it at a profit. However, the head of the sculpture department of the gallery noticed the resemblance of the sculpture to an illustration in the above mentioned catalogue of Polish war losses. He contacted the National Museum, which confirmed his suspicions. The Museum also asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for assistance. The Polish Embassy in Washington started difficult negotiations with the New York dealer, which ended successfully in June 2002. A month later, the sculpture was handed over to the Director of the National Museum in Warsaw.