For years, the Royal Collection's double portrait of an Electress and her Son received little attention. Given by Queen Victoria as a Christmas present to Prince Albert in 1840, the portrait shows an unidentified consort of a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire and her son. Their hands are clasped together, lending the composition a certain intimacy. This was originally thought to be the invention of Franz Wolfgang Rohrich (1787-1834), a well-known nineteenth-century imitator of Lucas Cranach who painted over forty versions of this particular painting alone.

The consensus remained until Royal Collection Trust conservators and curators collaborated with Cranach specialists at the Technical University of Cologne to undertake new technical research. A highly skilled preparatory drawing bearing all the hallmarks of Cranach's style was revealed under the paint layers. Taken with other technical evidence this was enough to convince the experts of its attribution to Cranach, not just as a minor studio version but the prime original. Following this exciting discovery the painting was cleaned and conserved in time for unveiling at the major exhibition at the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast Cranach der Alterer: Meister Marke Moderne (2017).