A painting by 17th-century Spanish master Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, stolen from the Prado Museum in Madrid in 1897, has been discovered in a French museum and returned to Spain after spending more than a century in obscurity. The sketch, titled "Saint Anne Teaching the Virgin to Read," was found during a routine inventory at the Museum of Fine Arts in Pau, southwestern France, in 2024.
The discovery began during a standard inventory process at the Pau museum, where 4,000 artworks needed to be catalogued. This routine exercise, conducted every ten years as required by French law since 2002, took an unexpected turn when a Louvre agent inspecting works on deposit at the museum exclaimed, "It looks like a Murillo!" The object of his surprise was a small canvas measuring 58.2 by 40.7 centimeters, labeled as "Spanish School, 17th century. The Education of the Virgin."
The resemblance to the work of the Sevillian master was striking. The painting depicts a tender scene of a seated woman in three-quarters view, wearing a white veil that reveals her brown hair, looking down at a book she holds on her knees. Beside her stands a young girl with a serious expression, facing forward and observing both the painter and the viewer. Their hands meet on the book's cover, while two embracing cherubs, whose features are barely visible, hover above the scene.
"It's a kind of passing from Saint Anne to her daughter. The scene is represented on the theme of daily life, it could almost be a genre scene if it weren't for those two angels in the upper part of the painting," explained Fabien Leclerc, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Pau. The sketch, painted in 1655, displays Murillo's characteristic style with warm, earthy tones of brown and ochre, minimizing the chromatic structure of the painting. It also shows the typical treatment of 17th-century religious painting, imbued with humility and almost popular in nature, stripped of any ostentatious heroism.
The artwork originally belonged to the collection of Queen Elisabeth Farnese (1692-1766), daughter of Edward Farnese, heir to the Duchy of Parma and wife of King Philip V of Spain. Her collection was bequeathed to the Prado Museum in Madrid, but the work in question was stolen in 1897 and remained missing for decades.
In 1907, Paul Lafond, curator of the Pau museum and close friend of painter Edgar Degas, acquired the painting. The circumstances of this acquisition remain unclear, with no trace of the transaction found in the museum's archives. When asked whether Lafond might have acted with knowledge of the painting's stolen status, current museum director Fabien Leclerc dismissed the notion. "I don't think so," he said. "He was someone who had a public life, who was a city councilor in Pau, and he didn't buy it for himself – he derived no profit from it. He bought it as I buy works today for the Museum of Fine Arts in Pau."
Lafond, a specialist renowned in art history circles for promoting Spanish painting of his era and acquiring numerous works, including pieces for the Louvre, was struck by the resemblance to Murillo's work when he discovered the sketch, probably at an art dealer's or in a gallery. He listed the painting as "after Murillo" without directly attributing it to the painter. "It's sometimes difficult when dealing with sketches to distinguish the master's hand from the workshop," Leclerc explained. "This wasn't a polished, finished work that he could have easily attributed to Murillo by making the connection to the painting stolen from the Prado ten years earlier."
At the time, art traceability systems were still rudimentary, especially for minor works. However, news of the stolen painting's presence in French territory quickly spread. It appeared several times in the Spanish press of the era, as indicated by the Prado Museum. In 1906, a first article mentioned the possibility that a Murillo sketch might be found in a French museum – a year before its purchase by Paul Lafond. The conditional information became more precise a few years later, on February 20, 1909, in the newspaper L'Imparcial, which indicated that the work was "exhibited to the public at the Municipal Museum of Pau."
This assertion was repeated several times in subsequent years until a surprising article appeared just months before the start of the Spanish Civil War. "In April 1936, the daily newspaper 'Ahora' again mentioned the theft as well as the location of the sketch in Pau and mentioned ongoing negotiations with the director of the French museum for its return," the Prado specified. The Pau museum is not currently able to confirm this information.
The painting then fell into oblivion, or rather slumbered in the reserves of the institution in southwestern France until the 2024 inventory. Phone calls flew between Pau, Paris, and Madrid as the first expert's impression was confirmed by Charlotte Chastel-Rousseau, a specialist in Spanish paintings from the 16th to 19th centuries at the Louvre Museum, and by Benito Navarrete, professor of art history at the Complutense University of Madrid, who then informed the Prado.
The story could have ended there with the painting quietly returning to its country of origin, but a new obstacle arose: France's 2002 law on museums, which makes works imprescriptible and inalienable, making it impossible to return them to a foreign museum. "The paradox is that today we cannot return the work," pointed out Fabien Leclerc. "If we want to declassify a work, we need a special law for each one, case by case." There are exceptions to this rule for works looted during World War II and human remains, but not for stolen paintings.
Another bill, initiated in 2023, proposes to lift this difficulty in cases of receiving stolen goods and would apply to Murillo's painting or works pillaged in the colonies. The text is not yet on the Senate's agenda. In the meantime, the Sevillian painter's sketch has been officially "deposited" at the Prado Museum for a period of ten years, renewable. On December 1, it will be presented in Madrid during the exhibition "The Prado in the Feminine," which will dedicate several rooms to the collection of Queen Isabella Farnese.
