A Rubens painting lost to history and misidentified for almost 300 years has re-emerged with the help of X-ray analysis and could now fetch up to $11.3 million at auction next month.
Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens completed Saint Sebastian Tended by Two Angels more than 400 years ago.
His brushstrokes depict the story of the Roman soldier Sebastian, pierced by soldiers’ arrows and left to die after he converted to Christianity, before angels miraculously intervene.
It left a “forceful impression” on George Gordon, Sotheby’s co-chairman of old master paintings worldwide, when he first saw it at an exhibition.
“It’s the liveliness of the brushwork,” Gordon told CNN.
Likely commissioned by Italian nobleman and military commander Ambrogio Spinola, the painting was believed to have been completed around 1606-08 in Italy, or around 1609-10 in Antwerp once Rubens had returned to his hometown.
The Spinola family were great patrons and friends of Rubens, Gordon added.
The painting disappeared from recorded history in the 1730s as it passed out of the family name and through the female line of descent until it reappeared in Missouri in 1963.
It was later acquired by the current owner at an auction in 2008, where it was misidentified as a painting by Laurent de la Hyre, a French artist.
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