09.02.2012
Gemäldegalerie
The Renaissance painting 'Madonna and Child' was recently brought to the New York branch of Sotheby's for expert assessment and subsequently identified by the auction house as indeed being the same picture that once belonged to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Following the announcement of their findings, its owner, US citizen Bryan Horney, stated his immediate intention to return the painting to the Gemäldegalerie. Mr. Horney had inherited the canvas from this father, who was stationed in Berlin after the war as an officer in the US army. He is believed to have purchased the painting in the capital sometime in 1946. Mr. Horney and members of his family recently presented the portrait of the Madonna to the Vice President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Günther Schauerte, in a small ceremony held at the offices of the Goethe-Institut in Washington. In a statement to the press Schauerte said: 'The National Museums in Berlin is grateful to Mr. Bryan Horney for his willingness to give the picture back to the Gemäldegalerie. We are also indebted to Sotheby's for their meticulous research into the work's provenance; both Mr. Horney and Sotheby's have demonstrated a responsible approach to cultural artefacts.' As a result of their actions, the picture has now been returned to Berlin.
The painting, 43 x 31 cm in size, depicts the Virgin Mary with the Christ child as a half-length figure set against a background landscape. The painting was originally attributed to the Lombardian painter Giovanni Boltraffio (1467-1516), although there is now general consensus among experts that the painting is the work of an unknown artist from Lombardy.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, the various museums on the Museum Island closed to the public. December 1940 marked the start of the evacuation of the various painting collections held there. As the air raids on Berlin became ever more frequent, the head of the Gemäldegalerie decided to have the paintings removed to the giant concrete air raid shelter in the Berlin borough of Friedrichshain. A similar shelter can still be seen, for example, in the Berlin borough of Wedding. This particular type of above-ground air raid shelter doubled as an anti-aircraft artillery platform and the artworks were stored in one of its towers. Works of art from the National Museums were first brought to the shelter in September 1941, among them this painting, thought missing until now. The removal of artworks for safekeeping took a whole year and only neared completion in September 1942. In March 1945, with defeat imminent, the works were again removed and stored in salt mineshafts in Thuringia. Shipments were then halted on 7 April, just a few weeks after they had begun. It is currently estimated that some 434 paintings were left behind in the tower of the 'Flakbunker' (or 'flak shelter') in Friedrichshain. On 2 May 1945 the shelter (the parts used for military operations, the turret and tower) surrendered to Red Army troops without a fight. Major fires broke out in the shelter's tower on the night of the 5th to 6th of May, as well as on the 14th and 18th of May. By the time the last of the fires had died down, all 434 paintings belonging to the Gemäldegalerie had disappeared without trace. They are listed in the catalogue 'Dokumentation der Verluste' (or 'Documentation of the Losses') volume 1, Gemäldegalerie, in the section dedicated solely to 'works presumed lost in the tower of the "flak shelter" in Berlin-Friedrichshain in May 1945'. In identifying the 'Madonna and Child', Sotheby's were able to use this publication to draw their findings.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation stated: 'The work in question is important: of the group of paintings belonging the Gemäldegalerie that were left in Berlin in 1945, it is the only work of art to have been rediscovered so far. Until now it was believed that all the Gemäldegalerie's pictures that were removed to the flak shelter in Friedrichshain perished in the flames in May 1945. We can only hope that further works belonging to the Gemäldegalerie will be retrieved as a consequence of this case.'