World
The Lost Rubens Oil Sketches
Discover the intriguing story behind the lost Rubens oil sketches, shedding light on the mysterious disappearance of these valuable artworks and the quest to uncover their hidden history.
Among the most valuable art treasures once held at Friedenstein Castle, a vast baroque palace in eastern Germany, was a series of five oil sketches depicting saints by Peter Paul Rubens that disappeared at the end of World War II.
The Disappearance and Return
The castle, home of the dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, lost its powers after the 1918 revolution. In 1945, as American and Soviet forces closed in on Gotha, representatives of the ducal family removed truckloads of valuable art, including the Rubens sketches. Three of these sketches were sold on the market. “St. Gregory of Nazianzus” is now being returned to the castle by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which bought it from a New York gallery in 1952.
According to experts, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum did not know the work had been misappropriated and illicitly sold. A negotiated agreement includes compensation for the museum. Tobias Pfeifer-Helke, the director of the foundation overseeing Friedenstein Castle’s museums, expressed his delight: “Our goal is to restore the historic integrity of the collection — especially its core works, these five Rubens sketches which belong together as a series.”