The uncommon silverpoint portrait of Susanna Pfeffinger by the German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung Grien was blocked from sale simply 48 hours earlier than it was set to go below the hammer. France’s Ministry of Tradition declared it a nationwide treasure on March twenty first, blocking it from leaving France for 30 months and due to this fact from being offered at public sale on March twenty third.
In an announcement after the ministry’s determination, public sale home Beaussant Lefèvre & Associés stated they suspended the sale “regardless of robust curiosity from a number of worldwide establishments and collectors,” which suggests they anticipated it to promote overseas. The weren’t happy to need to cancel the sale on such quick discover, and to be truthful, they’d filed for an export license on November 25, 2025. The ministry’s Nationwide Treasures Advisory Fee waited nearly 4 months, assembly on March 18, 2026, to deliberate.
The Fee decided that the portrait was of “main curiosity to the nationwide heritage from the standpoint of historical past and artwork.” The ruling factors to the significance of the artist and the small variety of drawings by him — 252, solely 15 of them portraits and solely 12 of these finished within the silverpoint approach (drawn with a silver-tipped stylus on paper coated in bone powder). The portrait “testifies to Baldung’s virtuosity in his use of the silverpoint approach, realized from [Albrecht] Dürer, really useful by Leonardo da Vinci in his Treatise on Portray and practiced by all the good artists of the interval, akin to Holbein the Elder and Hans Cranach, which permits only a few corrections, requiring nice sureness of line.” The opinion additionally cites the significance of the topic Susanna Pfeffinger as a member of the excessive society of Strasbourg, and the unimaginable uninterrupted possession historical past of the portrait that has stayed within the household for generations because it was first made in 1517.
It seems vital to retain on the territory this silverpoint portrait, emblematic of Baldung’s artwork, most likely the one one nonetheless in non-public palms in France and with out equal in French public collections, which has remained unknown to specialists and is strongly rooted within the historical past of Strasbourg, each by the individual represented and by its steady location on this metropolis since its creation.
The pre-sale estimate was 1.5 – 3 million euros (ca. $1.74 – 3.5 million), however the portrait was more likely to promote for rather more than that, because the final Baldung portrait to come back up for public sale approach again in 2007 offered for $3.7 million, and that is the one silverpoint portrait nonetheless in non-public palms. With export barred for the following two and a half years, Beaussant Lefèvre & Associés has gone again to drafting board, so the communicate. They’re now working to rearrange a personal sale to a French purchaser who will preserve the work in France.
