Top 10 Rediscovered Masterpieces

It’s not uncommon to hear stories or rumours about rediscovered masterpieces, from the tucked away corners of your grandparents’ home, to the dusty boxes of attics, or the storage containers of garages. Here are the top ten finds.

10. Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1600-10)

The 400-year-old canvas – which depicts the beheading of an Assyrian general, Holofernes, by Judith from the biblical Book of Judith – was found in 2014 when the owners of a house near the southwestern French city of Toulouse were investigating a leak in the ceiling. Discovered in remarkably good condition, specialists believe the work was painted between 1600 and 1610 and worth as much as €120 million ($140 mil).

However, when the painting was cleaned and analyzed in Paris, experts debated its true origins. Some claimed that Louis Finson – a 17th-century Flemish Baroque painter who both studied and imitated Caravaggio’s style – created the work, while others believed that the Renaissance master painted it himself sometime in the early 1600s. (According to Finson’s will, the Flemish painter owned a copy of Judith Beheading Holofernes, but it disappeared around 400 years ago.)

See also: The 5 Most Notorious Art Forgers

Art expert Eric Turquin asserted that the attic Caravaggio is indeed genuine, citing its brush strokes, intricate details and use of light and energetic style as proof. Other experts, like British art critic Jonathan Jones, claimed that the painting lacked Caravaggio’s ‘psychological intensity’ or signature realism. Since then, the contested Caravaggio work continues to be a magnet for controversy. In 2016, art historian Giovanni Agosti resigned from the board of Milan’s Brera Art Gallery after the institution displayed the work alongside authenticated Caravaggio paintings.

9. Eugène Atget, lost photographs of Paris

An important portfolio of images by Eugène Atget, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of modern photography, was thought to have been lost – until it was rediscovered almost by chance among the archives of the artist André Derain. Comprising 21 lots, these works dating from 1896 sold in 2016 for between £1,000 to £109,000, totaling £730,000 ($950,000).

Born in 1857, Atget first began taking photographs in 1890, documenting the architecture of Paris’ streets, from door handles to monuments, shop fronts and the public.

8. Jackson Pollock, Untitled Gouache (c. late-1950s-60s)

In December 2015, in Sun City, Arizona, while helping an elderly neighbor prepare to move into a retirement home, a local man spotted a Los Angeles Lakers poster in the garage, signed by Kobe Bryant. They contacted Scottsdale-based J. Levine Auction & Appraisal to gauge its value, but the piece of sports memorabilia ended up being one of the least valuable artworks in the house. While investigating the garage, auction house employees stumbled upon a painting that appeared to be by Jackson Pollock, along with a cache of works by Color Field painter Kenneth Noland, American abstract artist Jules Olitski, and visual artist Cora Kelley Ward.

The homeowner had inherited the treasure trove of paintings from his half-sister, New York socialite Jennifer Gordon Cosgriff, who died in 1993. Private investigators hired to look into the works determined that Cosgriff had been friends with Clement Greenberg, the mid-20th-century modern art critic and essayist, and artist Hazel Guggenheim McKinley, the sister of socialite and arts philanthropist Peggy Guggenheim.

The Jackson Pollock painting is estimated to be worth around $10 to $15 million. Thanks to Josh Levine, owner and CEO of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal, its provenance has been traced, at a cost of several tens of thousands, and forensic scientists have dated its materials back to the mid-20th century.

See also: Peggy Guggenheim: 7 Fascinating Facts

Bidding was expected to start at $5 million on June 20, 2017, however the auction was postponed to an unconfirmed date due to ‘improper vetting and dropped bids’.

7. Marie Krøyer, a folder of artworks and drawings

About twenty years ago, a collection of close to 60 previously unknown paintings and drawings of Danish artist Marie Krøyer was found in an attic in Dalarna, Sweden.

In 1962, Marie Krøyer’s daughter Vibeke inherited and gave the folder with drawings and paintings to a local craftsman. For nearly 40 years the folder was hidden in an attic, until it was found by chance. Based on its content, magister scholar Tonni Arnold published the book, The Art of Marie Krøyer’s Life in 2002. Prior to the discovery of the folder, only about twenty works from Marie Krøyer’s hand were known to exist.

See also: 6 Sensational Attic Finds

Krøyer was a promising young artist who laid down her brushes shortly after she married the successful Danish Skagen painter, Peder Severin Krøyer. She instead became his most distinguished model and her beauty became famous throughout the country. The marriage became turbulent and she soon left Denmark for Tällberg, Sweden, where she became the muse and wife of Hugo Alfvén. With her, she took her artworks and legacy.

6. John William Godward, Julia (1914)

This previously unrecorded work Julia is an important addition to the oeuvre of Victorian painter John William Godward, R.B.A. Rather fittingly, the presumed first owner was Julia Sophia Winkelmeyer Straub, the enterprising daughter of the St Louis brewer Julius Winkelmeyer. It was passed down through the family before it sold in May 2017 for $1.09 million at Sotheby’s.

5. Vincent van Gogh, Sunset at Montmajour (1888)

This Vincent Van Gogh landscape had been held in a Norwegian attic until 2013 when it was authenticated, following a two-year investigation, by the Van Gogh Museum. It is from what is arguably van Gogh’s greatest period when he lived in Arles, Southern France, and created works such as The Yellow House and The Sunflowers. It is the first full-size work by the artist to be discovered since 1928.

See also: The 10 Most Famous Works of Art and Where to Find Them

According to the International Business Times, Sunset at Montmajour is rumored to be worth $50 million.

4. Raden Saleh, Wild Bull Hunting (Bateng) (1855)

The painting by Indonesian master Raden Saleh of the 19th century, titled Wild Bull Hunting (Bateng), which was kept for many years in the cellar of a house in Auray (in Morbihan, France), was sold for €7.2 million ($8.5 milion) in January 2018 at auction in Vannes, a record price for a painting by the artist. Dating from 1855, this 1.10 x 1.85 m hunting scene was acquired by an anonymous collector from Jakarta.

3. Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Unconscious Patient (An Allegory of the Sense of Smell) (c. 1624)

Created by Rembrandt when he was in his late teens, the c. 1624 painting is one work in a series that the artist likely created to depict the five senses (to this day, the artwork that represents ‘taste’ is still missing). It portrays an unconscious young man who’s being revived with what appear to be smelling salts.

See also: Rembrandt on the Other Side of the Canvas

The work sat in a New Jersey basement for years, and was estimated at a meagre $500 to $800 when it came to the auction block at Nye and Company, in Bloomfield, New Jersey. The bidding soared to $870,000 when two Paris art dealers, Bertrand Talabardon and Bertrand Gautier, who run Galerie Talabardon et Gautier, identified it as one of the Dutch master’s first canvases. The American billionaire Thomas S. Kaplan, CEO of New York investment and management firm Electrum Group, then bought the painting at a price reported in the range of $3-4 million in 2016, and exhibited it at TEFAF.

2. Artemisia Gentileschi, Lucretia (c. 1630-45)

Never auctioned before, this rediscovered masterpiece by Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi sold in October 2018 for €1.8 million ($2.1 million) – more than double its estimate. It was consigned from an aristocratic collection where it had been kept since the mid-19th century.

See also: The 15 Most Expensive Female Artists

Gentileschi was known to paint strong and heroic women of Ancient and Christian mythology. She herself suffered sexual abuse and the subject matter of her paintings subsequently reflected her life.

1. Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi (c. 1500)

In 2005, Salvator Mundi was acquired for less than $10,000 at an auction in New Orleans by a consortium of art dealers. It had been heavily overpainted so looked like a copy, and the consortium spent the next few years having the painting restored and authenticated.

In May 2013 the Swiss dealer Yves Bouvier purchased the work for just over $75 million and the painting was then sold to Russian collector Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. It was exhibited in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New York in 2017, and then sold at auction in Christie’s in New York on November 15, 2017 for $450,312,500, a new record price for an artwork.

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