Charles Le Brun Painting Lost for 75 Years Returns to Potsdam

A painting by Charles Le Brun, lost for more than 75 years, is returning to the New Palace in Potsdam's Sanssouci Park. The German Press Agency (dpa) first reported the news, following a statement by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG).

Le Brun (1619–1690) was court painter to Louis XIV after 1661. He was the designer most responsible for the opulent style of the French monarchy. He created the work, a depiction of a sleeping Christ Child with the Holy Family, around 1655.

King Frederick the Great (Frederick II) of Prussia acquired the painting in the 1700s for the New Palace. It hung in one of the building's guest apartments.

How did the painting disappear?

In 1942, the threat of Allied bombings forced a mass evacuation. Much of the art held at the Picture Gallery of Sanssouci and the New Palace, including Le Brun's canvas, moved roughly 60 miles northwest to Schloss Rheinsberg.

On April 29, 1945, the Red Army entered Rheinsberg. Russian troops occupied the building. A short time later, according to the SPSG, the majority of the paintings housed in the Schloss were sent to the Soviet Union. Not all of the works arrived there, the foundation states. Some entered private collections in Rheinsberg under what the SPSG calls "convoluted circumstances."

Le Brun's painting was documented at Schloss Rheinsberg until July 30, 1945. After that date, a foundation spokesperson said, the painting vanished. It stayed out of sight for more than seven decades.

Where did it resurface?

The work reappeared at a Berlin auction house in 2021. No further details about the intervening years or the consignment were given in the foundation's statement.

What does this change for the public? It restores to view a work by one of the defining figures of French Baroque art, and it returns a piece of the New Palace's original hanging to its historical place.

The return was made possible by the support of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation and the Friends of the Prussian Palaces Association.

The "Holy Family" will be unveiled in the Upper Red Chambers of the New Palace on November 18, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. The presentation will mark the close of an 81-year gap since the painting left Potsdam for wartime safekeeping.

The recovery also points forward. Other works evacuated to Rheinsberg in 1942 remain unaccounted for, and the foundation's account of private collections acquiring paintings under unclear circumstances suggests that further resurfaces at auction cannot be ruled out.