Lost Charles Le Brun Painting Returns to Potsdam After More Than 75 Years
A painting that went missing at the end of the Second World War is going back to the New Palace in Potsdam, a city near Berlin. The work, by the French artist Charles Le Brun, has been out of sight for more than 75 years. ARTnews reported the return on 13 November 2026.
Le Brun (1619-1690) was a French Baroque painter, a style known for rich colour and dramatic staging. After 1661 he became court painter to King Louis XIV of France, the most powerful royal patron of his day. Around 1655, before that appointment, he painted a sleeping Christ Child with the Holy Family, the picture now returning to Germany.
The painting was bought in the 1700s by King Frederick the Great of Prussia. He hung it in a guest apartment in the New Palace, which he had built on the grounds of Sanssouci Park.
During the Second World War, the picture was moved for safety. In 1942, it was evacuated with other works from the Picture Gallery at Sanssouci and the New Palace to Schloss Rheinsberg, a palace about 60 miles (around 100 kilometres) north-west of Potsdam. Allied bombing had put Germany's art collections at risk.
The move did not keep the painting safe. Soviet troops, the Red Army, entered Rheinsberg on 29 April 1945 and took over the building. Soon after, most of the paintings held there were sent to the Soviet Union. The Le Brun was last recorded at Schloss Rheinsberg on 30 July 1945. After that date, its trail goes cold.
It turned up again in 2021 at an auction house in Berlin, a company that sells art to buyers in public sales. The painting's reappearance set in motion the process that brings it home now.
The return was made possible by support from the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation and the Friends of the Prussian Palaces Association, according to the announcement. The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, known as SPSG, which runs the palaces and gardens of the former Prussian royal family, made the announcement. The German Press Agency, dpa, was first to report it.
The "Holy Family" will be unveiled in the Upper Red Chambers of the New Palace on 18 November 2026 at 2:30 p.m. Visitors who want to see the picture in the rooms built for the king's guests will be able to do so from that day.
For the people who look after the palace, the moment is a quiet one. Every returned work means a conservator, a crate and an insurance policy, and the story of how it survived 80 years is written on its back, in the labels and old lot numbers that tell where it has been.
