In the 1950s, when inventories of monuments and antiques began in Poland, researchers did not have much experience in this field. Izabella Galicka and Hanna Sygietyńska, researchers from the Art Institute, were assigned to work in war-ravaged Mazovia. In 1964 they went to a small town of Kosów Lacki, where Władysław Stępień was the parish priest. Although priests at that time were very reluctant to talk to visitors, Father Stępień, seeing their interest in the destroyed, dirty painting hanging in his private apartment, agreed to take it down from the wall and examine it carefully. No one yet had any suspicion of the great value of this work of art.