Sartorio's Tiepolo Drawings

After the Italian troops occupied Gorizia in August 1916, a command to transfer cultural objects to the other zones of Austro-Hungary was issued. The drawings were sent to Vienna, but never arrived there – they remained in Ljubljana, kept in the Museo Rudolfinum, today’s National Gallery. After the end of WWI, political tensions prevented their restitution. During the 1930s, Anna Sartorio, heiress of Giuseppe Sartorio, who donated his collection to the city of Trieste in 1910, especially advocated the renewal of this restitution claim, directly addressing Benedetto Mussolini, while her husband Salvatore Segre, who was the Italian Kingdom’s senator, appealed to the Minister of foreign affairs, Galeazzo Ciano. The issue was solved only with the Italian occupation of Ljubljana in 1941, when the superintendent Fausto Franco took over the collection, and its return to Trieste was celebrated with an overcrowded ceremony at which Giulio Carlo Argan participated as the official of the Amministrazione Antichità e Belle Arti.

(http://museosartoriotrieste.it/portfolio/tiepolo-a-trieste/)