Research conducted by the Monuments Men and Women Foundation focused on establishing whether The Marketplace at Pirna held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston was the same painting owned by the German Jewish collector Dr. Max J. Emden prior to World War II. Central to the research was the identification of historical markings on the painting, further completing and confirming its provenance.

A key discovery was the identification of the inventory number “1025” on the bottom right corner of the painting in Houston. This number corresponds to records and watercolor illustrations of an 18th-century collection of Leipzig banker and merchant Gottfried Winckler. Further archival evidence confirms that by 1930, this painting was in the possession of art dealer Anna Caspari, who sold it to Dr. Emden that year.

In June 1938, amid increasing racial persecution of Jewish persons by the Nazi regime, Dr. Emden sold The Marketplace at Pirna to dealer Karl Haberstock, who was acting on behalf of Hitler for the planned Führermuseum in Linz. This transaction was arranged by Caspari and occurred during a period when Dr. Emden was subjected to financial distress due to that persecution. There is no evidence that Dr. Emden received proceeds of the sale.

By August 1940, The Marketplace at Pirna—along with two other view paintings by Bellotto that Dr. Emden sold to Haberstock in the same transaction—was assigned a Linz number. It was included in Linz Album V, with the inventory number "F-35." This album was one of approximately thirty-one albums that contained images of the works of art that had been selected for the Führermuseum.