A missing masterwork by a follower of the Italian Renaissance painter Filippino Lippi hidden in simple sight in a London bungalow has marketed for £255,000 ($321,000) at Dawsons Auctioneers in London.
The painting belonged to a girl in her 90s who moved to a nursing home previous year. Her family members enlisted Dawsons to assess the house and its contents as they commenced the process of offering the house to support cover her professional medical treatment.
“Their anticipations ended up originally incredibly small,” Siobhan Tyrrell, the auction house’s head of valuations and a expert on Antiques Roadshow, said in a video clip. “The very last place that I went to was her bedroom and I was surprised to see this lovely 16th-century spiritual painting… It was just flabbergasting.”
“It’s an absolute godsend and will truly modify her lifestyle,” Tyrrell included.
The girl, who reportedly suffers from dementia, was born in Italy and moved to the U.K. in her youth. She inherited the do the job from her father at the time of his loss of life 30 years in the past, but was unaware of its value and historic relevance.
Lippi was the illegitimate youngster of a nun, Lucrezia Buti, and a priest, the painter Fra Filippo Lippi. The elder Lippi, renowned for his classy Madonna paintings, taught the Renaissance good Sandro Botticelli, who in flip taught Filippino Lippi.
Although the auction house has attributed the work to a person of Lippi’s followers, the spectacular hammer price implies that some bidders suspect it is by the hand of the artist himself. According to the Artnet Selling price Database, only 5 Lippi paintings have obtained a far better auction end result, with a report price of $2.3 million set at Christie’s New York in 2005.
Titled The Depiction of the Madonna and Little one, the rediscovered oil painting hung earlier mentioned the women’s bed, off kilter.
“Most people today enjoy programs like Antiques Roadshow to see rare finds being found and we all secretly hope to uncover a little something lurking in our possess attics,” Aubrey Dawson, taking care of director at Dawsons, advised the Unbiased. “The discovery of this portray was just one of those moments and the simple fact the proprietor and her family members experienced no plan of its benefit made it all the a lot more pleasant for absolutely everyone anxious.”
It was certainly the star of Dawsons’ good art and antiques sale, attracting fascination from no much less than 20 bidders.
“We understood it would do very well.” auctioneer Peter Mason extra, “but the ultimate hammer value exceeded our anticipations.”
Follow Artnet Information on Facebook:
Want to stay in advance of the art entire world? Subscribe to our e-newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive essential usually takes that drive the conversation forward.