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Daniel Chodowiecki, The Farewell of Jean Calas from His Family

GemäldegalerieTiergarten

Daniel Chodowiecki, 1726–1801. Images of the Enlightenment in Berlin

Now showing15 September 2026 – 10 January 2027Ticketed — see website

A cabinet show marking the 300th birthday of Chodowiecki, star of late-18th-century Berlin, with 20+ of his key works on the Enlightenment's social questions.

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Around 1767 Chodowiecki painted Jean Calas, a Toulouse merchant condemned to death, saying goodbye to his distraught family. For the first time, that painting sits in one place with its preparatory drawing, the prints made after it and the original copper plate they came from.

Calas was a Protestant, executed in 1762 on an unproven charge of strangling his own son; Voltaire's On Tolerance got him cleared three years later. You can follow the image from the oil to a test print washed in dark grey from the first plate, then to a print from the second. Around them hang red chalk portraits of Berlin's Enlightenment circle, Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Nicolai among them, and prints on education, family and social order.

It's a cabinet show of just over twenty works inside the Gemäldegalerie, for his 300th birthday, and no critic has reviewed it yet. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm, wheelchair accessible. A public symposium runs at the Kulturforum on 14 and 15 October (registration required).

Look for

  • The Parting of Jean Calas from His Family

    Look for the oil from around 1767: the condemned Calas taking leave of his distraught family, painted to stir the viewer's empathy.

  • The original Calas copper plate

    The plate itself hangs near its prints, including a 1767 test print washed in dark grey and a 1768 print from the second plate.

  • Moses Mendelssohn in red chalk

    A red chalk portrait of the Berlin philosopher from around 1774/75, one of several Chodowiecki drew of the city's Enlightenment thinkers.

  • Father Gassner exorcising a girl

    A 1790 black-brush drawing heightened in white, made for a pocket book for the Enlightened, showing a priest's exorcism of a girl.

Good for

  • Locals Who've Seen It All
  • Nerding Out

Skip if

You want a big survey: it's a cabinet show of just over twenty works.

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