Back in Berlin

At the center of the cabinet exhibition "Back in Berlin. A bust of the Virgin Mary and the Benoit Oppenheim Collection" is a newly acquired Maria lactans bust from the early 16th century. The sculpture ranks among the finest Upper Swabian works of the late Middle Ages and originally belonged to the important collection of the Berlin banker Benoit Oppenheim, whose masterpieces are now largely housed in the Bode Museum.



At the beginning of the 20th century, Oppenheim (1842–1931) assembled an exceptionally dense and high-quality collection of medieval sculpture, displayed in his villa in the Tiergarten district and published in two lavish catalogues. From 1920 onward, however, he began selling the works—much to the disappointment of Wilhelm von Bode, who had hoped for donations to the Berlin museums. This exhibition is the first to honor Oppenheim as a remarkable collecting figure.

The Maria lactans has a particularly eventful provenance. Documented in Oppenheim’s collection in 1907, it passed in 1928 into the hands of the Jewish banker Jakob Goldschmidt. His collection was forcibly auctioned in 1936 under National Socialist persecution. The bust was purchased at that sale by art dealer Johannes Hinrichsen and subsequently acquired by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the same year. After its restitution to Goldschmidt’s heirs in 2023, the Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein—supported by the Friede Springer Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of the German States—was able to repurchase it in 2025.


Conceived as a reliquary, the globe prominently presented by Mary contains a small compartment once sealed with rock crystal. In connection with the intimate image of the Christ Child nursing at Mary’s breast, it likely held a relic of Mary’s milk—a highly venerated devotional object in the late Middle Ages, often brought back by pilgrims from the so-called Milk Grotto in Bethlehem.
The bust is now displayed together with other major works from the Oppenheim collection preserved in the Bode Museum and will join the museum’s permanent exhibition after the conclusion of the special show.