Merkel Portrait Unveiled at Berlin Bode-Museum
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- Jérémie Queyras, a 28-year-old Paris-born painter, secretly met Merkel over months in a Berlin government-quarter studio to create the portrait, which was unveiled to family, friends and art critics this week at the Bode-Museum.
- Queyras wrote to Merkel by hand in 2022 enclosing colour photocopies of his paintings and waited three years for her reply; when they finally met in her Berlin office he said she ignored his "scruffy sneakers" and gave him the commission without ever seeing his original works.
- Angela Merkel personally paid for the painting rather than using German taxpayer funds, so her ownership could not be disputed; the portrait can be loaned to the chancellery but she can take it back if the far right — who view her as the "agent of doom" — gains power.
- The Bode-Museum portrait will hang until October, then move to the chancellery next to a self-mocking portrait of Merkel's rival Gerhard Schröder by Jörg Immendorff, which has been compared to the embossed coin of a Roman emperor.
- Queyras deliberately avoided painting Merkel's famous rhombus hand gesture as too cliched; her left hand instead rests on a chair arm with three fingers, while her right hangs down, capturing what the artist described as her "characteristic unease, and slight impatience."
- The painting places desk items from Merkel's office behind her — a yellow cardboard file (a nod to her analogue governance style) and a silver cube engraved with her motto "In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft" ("In serenity strength lies"), a gift when she entered office.
- The unveiling, timed to five years since Merkel left office, comes amid a wave of nostalgia encapsulated by the rise of lo-fi "merkelwave," which samples her phrases including "the internet is uncharted territory for all of us."
Why it matters: By paying privately and keeping ownership herself, Merkel ensured the portrait's fate wouldn't depend on a future German government — a hedge against a far-right rise the article notes is far from hypothetical. The painting's choice to bury her trademark rhombus hand in favour of personal desk objects reframes her legacy through intimate minutiae rather than a single iconic posture.
