Lost Rubens sketches return to a German castle after 80 years

The Ducal Museum in Gotha, Germany, is displaying five oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens together for the first time since they disappeared more than 80 years ago.

The works depict saints and originated from a group of 22 sketches painted on wood in 1620 and 1621. Rubens created these studies to prepare for ceiling paintings at a Jesuit church in Antwerp.

Because that church burned down in 1718, these sketches serve as some of the only remaining records of those famous 17th century paintings. The sketches were part of the Schloss Friedenstein collection but vanished during the Second World War. Representatives of a local ducal family took three pieces to the city of Coburg, where they were sold illicitly and entered the US art market. The Red Army looted the other two studies, though those were returned to Gotha in 1959.

Museums and foundations recently coordinated to bring the pieces back together. A museum in Buffalo, New York, returned one sketch in 2024, while another was recovered through a private settlement funded by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation. The Bührle Foundation also agreed to loan the final sketch from Kunsthaus Zurich to Gotha. The exhibition opens on 9 November to mark the 450th anniversary of Rubens' birth next year.