A painting thought to be a lost masterpiece by the Renaissance artist Caravaggio was found under an old mattress in the attic of a house in the French city of Toulouse in 2014, it has emerged.
‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’ dates back to 1606 and depicts the biblical scene of the beautiful Jewish widow, Judith, beheading a sleeping Assyrian general.
The house owners discovered it while investigating a leak in the ceiling.
Eric Turquin, an art expert in Paris, authenticated the work as a Caravaggio. Most specialists agreed, though some in Italy had their doubts.
Its estimated value is between R1.8bn and R2.8bn. The painting was to have been auctioned in France in June 2019, but, two days before the sale, it was bought by an anonymous foreign buyer.
In 2014, Italian police found a painting by French post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin and another by Pierre Bonnard hanging in the kitchen of a pensioner.
The unsigned works had originally been stolen from a house in London in 1970, and later turned in at the Turin railway station as lost property, having been left on a train.
A retired Fiat factory worker bought them at auction in 1975 for 45,000 lire (about R7.50), and hung them in his kitchen.
The Gauguin was estimated to be worth from R162m to R486.3m and the Bonnard, R9.726m.
Police returned the works to the elderly Italian buyer, since they had been bought in good faith and the original owners had passed away, leaving no heirs.