A miniature painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder not seen publicly since the end of World War II has been returned to the State Art Collections of Dresden, Germany.
The painting depicts Friedrich III, also known as Frederich the Wise, a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. The Elector of Saxony is cast on a turquoise background and wears a reserved expression along with his characteristic thicket of beard and fur-trimmed robe. In the early 16th century, Friedrich served as a steadfast protector of Martin Luther, most notably sheltering him in Wartburg Castle after Emperor Charles V had declared him an outlaw of the Holy Roman Empire in 1521’s Edict of Worms.
Following Friedrich’s death in 1525, demand for paintings of the great Saxon patriarch surged and few were better suited to the task than Cranach the Elder, who had served as court painter since 1505. Today, roughly 25 of these portraits survive, including the one recently reacquired by the State Art Collections of Dresden.
The small wood panel portrait was last documented in May 1945, among the works deposited by Dresden’s museums in the limestone quarry of Pockau-Lengefeld, which served as a shelter for art as the Red Army approached from the east. It disappeared without a trace until 2024, when it was consigned to Artcurial, a Parisian auction house that duly investigated its provenance. One clue suggesting the painting’s institutional past was the number 1355 painted in gold on the panel’s lower right-hand corner. As it turned out, the Cranach was first catalogued in a 1722 to 1728 inventory under the same number, a time when it was housed inside the church of the Royal Palace.
Central Dresden including the Royal Palace. Photo: Getty Images.
Its modern owners, the Dreyfus family in France, were contacted and returned the painting following “lengthy negotiations” and a “financial agreement,” according to the State Art Collections of Dresden. It is currently on show at the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Palace as part of a special exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Friedrich III’s death, titled “All that Glisters is Not Gold.” Following the show, the painting will be on permanent display inside the Semper Gallery of the Baroque palace complex.
“Friedrich the Wise, Elector of Saxony, is of great importance to Saxon and German history. He also commissioned important works that are now held in the Dresden Old Masters Picture Gallery, home to the world’s largest Cranach collection,” Holger Jacob-Friesen, the director of the gallery, said in a statement. “This small portrait was sorely missed. What a stroke of luck that it is now returning to the collection.”
The Cranach portrait on view at the Royal Palace. © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo: Alexander Peitz.
Days before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Nazi authorities ordered Dresden museums to move their works to secure underground sites. As the war intensified, these works were transported to ever more extreme shelters, including an abandoned railway tunnel and the aforementioned limestone quarry. After the arrival of the Soviets in 1945, many of these Dresden works were transferred to Moscow and Kiev by so-called Trophy Brigades, which roved East Germany hoovering up artworks. The process was partly reversed between 1955 and 1958 when many works returned to Dresden.
In 1963, the Dresden State Art Collections published a catalogue that listed more than 500 lost or missing paintings. Eighteen of these belong to the Cranach workshop, with seven so far returned.