PARIS.- Beaussant Lefèvre & Associés, in collaboration with the expert in master drawings Cabinet de Bayser, will auction at Hôtel Drouot on Monday, 23 March 2026, on the eve of the opening of the Salon du Dessin, an unpublished work by Hans Baldung Grien (1484/85–1545), one of the greatest masters of the Renaissance.

Executed in silverpoint on paper prepared with bone powder, a technique favoured by Renaissance virtuosi, this drawing has remained in the family of the sitter, Susanna Pfeffinger (1465-1538), for more than 500 years, passed down from generation to generation. It is the only silverpoint drawing by the artist still available in private hands. Indeed, only a handful of Baldung drawings remain in private collections, out of a total of approximately 250 recorded drawings. Executed in the same technique, it can be compared to those assembled in the famous Karlsruhe sketchbook preserved at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (the “Karlsruher Skizzenbuch”:
www.kunsthalle-karlsruhe.de/flipbook/hans-baldung-grien-karlsruher-skizzenbuch-1511- 1545), with the added distinction of bearing the artist’s original monogram.

“The discovery of this drawing was both an intimate and professional shock. Intimate, because I have always felt a deep personal attachment to Alsace and its people, my grandfather having taken part with Maréchal de Lattre’s army in the liberation of Alsace, a region he loved so deeply that he settled there, in Kientzheim near Colmar. Professionally, because this drawing is, in my view, the most important work I have brought to light since the discovery of Leonardo da Vinci’s Saint Sebastian in 2016. Baldung’s drawings are of extreme rarity. The last to appear at auction was sold in 2007 for over 3.7 million dollars.” — Patrick de Bayser, Cabinet de Bayser

“This silverpoint portrait of Susanna Pfeffinger, executed in Strasbourg in 1517 by Hans Baldung, brings together the very essence of the Renaissance: the flourishing of portraiture with the rise of private patronage and the use of new techniques by a master draftsman working in the shadow of the cathedral spire, the pinnacle of Christendom, in a ‘free city ’of merchants and intellectuals that had just witnessed the birth of printing.

In our profession as auctioneers, where provenance has become the decisive criterion, we never imagined presenting for sale a drawing preserved within the same family for more than 500 years. It is an intact fragment of art history re-emerging.” — Arthur de Moras, Partner auctioneer – BEAUSSANT LEFÈVRE & Associés

One of the most original artists of the Renaissance

Born in Swäbische Gmünd, Hans Baldung Grien began his career in Albrecht Dürer’s workshop in Nuremberg, earning his master’s trust to the point of running the studio. From 1509 onward, however, it was in Strasbourg that he settled and prospered. Having absorbed all the techniques and artistic vocabulary of the Nuremberg master, Baldung rapidly developed a highly original body of work, marked by a strong interest in themes of death, eroticism, witchcraft, and the passage of time. Gifted with a fertile imagination and an independent spirit, he devised new interpretations of traditional subjects. His vision of women, at once powerful and erotic, was without equal in his time, and the extraordinarily skilful and intricate interlacings of female bodies feel like a surreal breath of air in an era stifled by the tensions between Catholicism and the emerging Protestant schism. His art defies categorisation, yet his influence was considerable.

His profoundly human portraits, virtuoso drawings, engravings, sumptuous stained glass, and large-scale altarpieces leave no viewer indifferent. A major retrospective was devoted to him in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 30 November 2019 to 8 March 2020, alongside exhibitions in Strasbourg and Fribourg-en-Brisgau. A significant exhibition at the National Gallery of Art at Yale in the United States had already brought together numerous drawings and prints in 1981.

A technique favoured by Renaissance virtuosi

This drawing was executed with a brass stylus tipped with silver, applied to paper prepared with a layer of bone powder. The line penetrates the prepared ground, which in turn reveals the image. This supremely refined technique, described by Leonardo da Vinci in his Treatise on Painting, was favoured by Renaissance virtuosi. Baldung was introduced to it by Dürer, who had himself learned it from his father, a goldsmith. The artist allows no margin for error in his line: Baldung masters both spacing and composition, modulating the pressure of the point to deepen shadows or soften light.

A drawing preserved within the same family for more than 500 years
Depicting the portrait of their ancestor and preserved within the sitter’s family for over five centuries, passed down from generation to generation, this drawing was unknown to scholars specialising in Hans Baldung Grien until today. Its rediscovery, therefore, represents the unveiling of an unpublished work, highly sought after by the market, offered by BEAUSSANT LEFÈVRE & Associés, in collaboration with the expert in master drawings, Cabinet de Bayser, on the eve of the next Salon du dessin.

The sitter and the importance of the Strasbourg circle

The sitter, Susanna Pfeffinger (1465-1538), shown bust-length in three-quarter view, dressed as a devout woman (bonnet and chin cloth, high-necked dress), was the wife of Friedrich Prechter, whose family—principal suppliers of paper to major European printers and publishers—was connected to that of the artist. The Pfeffinger and Prechter families were deeply involved in the development and history of Strasbourg. While the execution of this portrait in 1517 fits within a logic of family alliance, given that Margaretha, the artist’s daughter, was connected to the Prechter family, the ties between the Prechter, family and Baldung were also likely commercial.

Baldung settled in Strasbourg in 1509, acquired citizenship, joined the Painters ’Guild in 1510, opened his workshop, and received major private commissions, including the imposing portrait of Margrave Christopher I of Baden and his family in adoration before Saint Anne Trinitarian (1510, Karlsruhe Museum), and, in the religious sphere, the triptych for the Commandery of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, produced in Strasbourg in 1511 and now dispersed.

In 1517, the year this portrait was, he became a member of Strasbourg’s Grand Council, associating with the city’s liberal and independent elite. Strasbourg was a free imperial city, autonomous and governed by a council of leading citizens, while still owing allegiance to the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire through its prince-bishop. The climate of freedom there attracted numerous intellectuals, and the wealth generated by trade drew artists, goldsmiths, sculptors, painters, and craftsmen. Around 1520, Baldung embraced the Reformation and partially redirected his inspiration towards secular subjects, while continuing to engage with sacred themes.
Among the great German masters, Baldung became famous in Strasbourg, just as Dürer was in Nuremberg, Grünewald in Colmar, Cranach in Saxony and Holbein in Basel.

Proximity to Dürer and Baldung’s unique style

Baldung is widely regarded as the most gifted artist to emerge from Dürer’s workshop. Both were virtuosos of silverpoint, achieving portraits of remarkable clarity. A striking comparison between this 1517 portrait of Susanna Pfeffinger and Dürer’s silverpoint portrait of his wife, Agnes, from 1521, highlights both their closeness and Baldung’s gradual emancipation from strict imitation toward a subtle, tonal mastery of the medium.

Highly esteemed by Dürer, Baldung received, upon his master’s death in 1528, a lock of his hair “cut as a keepsake,” a gesture symbolising enduring friendship and mutual respect, almost a passing of the torch. This lock of hair has survived to this day and is currently kept at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, having remained with the precious Karlsruhe Sketchbook until the 19th century, which contains most of Baldung's silverpoint drawings.

Baldung’s career continued until his death in 1545. He engraved portraits of the leading Protestant reformers, including Martin Luther, Jakob Sturm, and Martin Bucer. He produced numerous paintings on secular and mythological themes and continued to supply an ecclesiastical and aristocratic clientele with Virgins and Child despite the iconoclasm of his time. Sensuality obsessively permeates his work: witches ’sabbaths, allegories of woman and death, or reflections on femininity such as The Seven Ages of Life (Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig).

His drawings are extremely refined, the subjects complex, and intellectual reflection assumes an increasingly important role in his art, poised between mocking philosophy and meditation, deliberately cultivating ambiguity.

Through images, Baldung sought to go further than his intellectual contemporaries, bringing the unconscious to the surface in his compositions. The Surrealists would later restore him to prominence, and his expressive, audacious, at times provocative style stands today as an essential alternative to the classical model of the Italian Renaissance.