A previously unknown portrait of Hans Baldung Grien appears in

A previously unknown painting by German Renaissance artist Hans Baldung Grien has been rediscovered in a wooden box that belonged to the family of the woman who sat in the portrait 500 years ago. Baldon’s paintings are extremely rare and only a few are in private collections. A person directly related to the owner of the original painting is an unprecedented find.

Born in 1484/5 in Gmünd, Swabia, into a family of scholars, lawyers and doctors, Baldon broke with the mold and abandoned university to train as an artist. He was a pupil of Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg between 1503 and 1507 and was so trusted by his teacher that at the end of his training he became responsible for the day-to-day work of the studio. It was in Dürer’s studio that he was given the nickname “The Green” because of his preference for the color green in his personal style and art. He adopted the moniker so thoroughly that he incorporated it into his signature monogram: HGB.

In 1510 he established his own studio in Strasbourg. Like his mentor, Baldon was a versatile painter, printer, engraver and stained glass artist. By the time he created his most famous work, the 11 polyptychs for the main altar of Freiburg Cathedral, he was winning widespread acclaim for his use of bright colors and eccentric treatment of popular traditional religious themes. His treatment of secular themes such as witchcraft, pornography, death and time was far from conventional, with a degree of candor and sensuality unmatched by other artists of his time.

After Hans Baldung Grien became famous for his altarpieces and religious art, he was commissioned to create portraits of the Holy Roman Emperor’s royal family, nobility, and wealthy elite. His portraits were not meticulous records of a subject’s features and clothing like his teacher Dürer; Baldon focused on capturing the subject’s character.

In 1517 he painted the portrait of Susanna Pfeffinger in Strasbourg, the same year he became a member of the city’s Grand Council. She was one of his wealthy royal patrons. Susanna Pfeffinger was born in 1465 in Celesta (now northeastern France), the daughter of the town’s mayor. She married Friedrich Precht, a prominent banker and businessman in Strasbourg who reached the pinnacle of commercial and social success. He lent money to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, so the circle couldn’t be any higher than that.

The portrait was painted with a sliver pen (a brass pen with a silver-plated tip) on paper made from bone meal, an extremely delicate and refined technique favored by Renaissance masters. It requires a very steady hand, only the pressure of the stylus on the prepared paper determines the depth of shadow and light. Dürer learned this technique from his goldsmith father. This portrait is the only silverpoint painting by the artist still in a private collection.

On a small scrap of paper the size of a postcard (15.7 × 10.4 cm; 6.2 × 4 in), Baldon depicts Pfeffinger in three-quarter profile, wearing a high-necked dress and mantelpiece, her head completely covered by a veil and hat, her neck and chin up to her lower lip covered by a chincloth tucked into the veil.

The family kept this precious little card in their vast archives for five centuries. The portrait was recently discovered in a crate filled with other paintings and was brought for appraisal by expert Arthur de Moras, partner at Beaussant Lefèvre auction house. He believes it is a rare work by Hans Baldung Grien, whose family is now auctioning it in Paris in March. The pre-sale estimate is 1.5 to 3 million euros (approximately 1.74 million to 3.5 million US dollars).