French culture ministry blocks sale of Baldung portrait

The rare silverpoint portrait of Susanna Pfeffinger by the German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung Grien was blocked from sale just 48 hours before it was set to go under the hammer. France’s Ministry of Culture declared it a national treasure on March 21st, blocking it from leaving France for 30 months and therefore from being sold at auction on March 23rd.

In a statement after the ministry’s decision, auction house Beaussant Lefèvre & Associés said they suspended the sale “despite strong interest from several international institutions and collectors,” which suggests they expected it to sell abroad. The were not pleased to have to cancel the sale on such short notice, and to be fair, they had filed for an export license on November 25, 2025. The ministry’s National Treasures Advisory Commission waited almost four months, meeting on March 18, 2026, to deliberate.

The Commission determined that the portrait was of “major interest to the national heritage from the point of view of history and art.” The ruling points to the importance of the artist and the small number of drawings by him — 252, only 15 of them portraits and only 12 of those done in the silverpoint technique (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 technique, learned from [Albrecht] Dürer, recommended by Leonardo da Vinci in his Treatise on Painting and practiced by all the great artists of the period, such as Holbein the Elder and Hans Cranach, which allows very few corrections, requiring great sureness of line.” The opinion also cites the importance of the subject Susanna Pfeffinger as a member of the high society of Strasbourg, and the incredible uninterrupted ownership history of the portrait that has stayed in the family for generations since it was first made in 1517.

It appears important to retain on the territory this silverpoint portrait, emblematic of Baldung’s art, probably the only one still in private hands in France and without equivalent in French public collections, which has remained unknown to specialists and is strongly rooted in the history of Strasbourg, both by the person represented and by its continuous location in this city since its creation.

The pre-sale estimate was 1.5 – 3 million euros (ca. $1.74 – 3.5 million), but the portrait was likely to sell for much more than that, as the last Baldung portrait to come up for auction way back in 2007 sold for $3.7 million, and this is the only silverpoint portrait still in private hands. With export barred for the next two and a half years, Beaussant Lefèvre & Associés has gone back to drawing board, so the speak. They are now working to arrange a private sale to a French buyer who will keep the work in France.

* This article was originally published here