The Jordaens hidden above a cellar ceiling

When Joseph Scheppers de Bergstein returned to Emmaus Castle at Walem in June 1940, German forces had removed the Jordaens panel and other valuables. He later used the property to support a resistance network. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he died that year in the Ellrich camp. His son Gaëtan reported the painting stolen after the war.

In 2022, the panel was found above a false ceiling in the cellar of a house in southern France. Its previous possessor had told his nephew that he suspected it had been stolen. The nephew began tracing the work after his mother inherited the property. Belgian officials used the wartime loss database to connect the panel to the family’s original declaration.

The painting underwent conservation before the heirs received it at Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen on 5 February 2025. The Belgian Federal Public Service Economy described it as the first restitution achieved through its online looted-art database. The object was a particular version of Jordaens’s composition, distinct from the versions in Berlin and at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.