Overview
- The portrait by 28-year-old painter Jérémy Queyras has been completed and will be unveiled on Tuesday, June 30, with a museum exhibition at the Bode-Museum from July 1 to October 4 before it is installed in the Ahnengalerie.
- Queyras first contacted Merkel in 2022 and was chosen after a meeting in June 2025, then met her repeatedly from summer 2025 to paint the commissioned work in a dedicated Berlin studio.
- Merkel told Die Zeit that the process felt odd because she is 'slowly becoming history' and she accepted the portrait with measured humor, saying roughly, 'Da häng ich dann eben.'
- The portrait will fill a long-vacant place next to Gerhard Schröder in the Ahnengalerie, the first-floor portrait series of postwar chancellors started by Helmut Schmidt.
- The public exhibition and the choice of a young, relatively unknown artist have prompted wider coverage, with Die Zeit documenting the sittings and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation confirming the exhibition and installation plans.