French gallery discovers 500-year-old work by German painter
dpa 14.01.2026
A drawing by the German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung Grien has been discovered after more than 500 years.
It lay undisturbed in a wooden box and a French art gallery has now determined that it is a genuine treasure.
The portrait of a woman, created with a silver pen, dates from 1517 and has remained in the Alsatian family of the woman it portrayed, Susanna Pfeffinger, since its creation.
A Renaissance artist, Baldung is considered as significant as he is idiosyncratic. He became famous for his scenes of the Fall of Man, candid depictions of saints and dramatic witch scenes.
The high altar of Freiburg Minster in southern Germany is considered a highlight of his early work. Baldung was born in 1484 or 1485, and worked as a painter, draughtsman and copperplate engraver. He collaborated for several years with painter Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg.
Baldung spent most of his life in Strasbourg, where he died in 1545.
Patrick de Bayser from the Paris gallery Cabinet de Bayser describes the discovery of the drawing as "a shock."
"Drawings by Baldung are extremely rare," he said on Wednesday, with only a few of them in private collections. The family approached him with a request to examine the picture, which they knew nothing about.
Now the work is to be auctioned on March 23 at Beaussant Lefèvre & Associés in Paris. De Bayser estimates its value at between €1.5 and €3 million ($1.75 - $3.5 million).
Auctioneer Arthur de Moras says that the family had numerous paintings in their extensive family archive. Several dozen of them, from more distant ancestors, had been stored in a wooden box – among them the portrait that has now been identified as a work by Baldung Grien.
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