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Like many of the SKD’s holdings, the painting was stored in Albrechtsburg Palace in Meissen during the Second World War and then in the railroad tunnel near Rottwerndorf (Pirna district). From July 1945, Dresden’s museum holdings were transported to the Soviet Union. They were taken – according to the opinion at the time – as compensation for wartime losses of Soviet museums. The works were considered irretrievably lost and there was no prospect of their return until the Soviet government surprisingly decided to give them back in 1955. The paintings were first presented in Moscow's Pushkin Museum and then in Berlin's National Gallery, before being returned to the Gemäldegalerie for the reopening ceremony of the reconstructed Sempergalerie on 3 June 1956. Among the paintings that were returned was Rembrandt's Double Portrait.