'Lost' Italian masterpieces sell for 1.7m pounds; were found behind a door
LONDON -- Two Italian Renaissance masterpieces which had been missing since the 19th century fetched 1.7 million pounds ($3.4 million) at an auction in southwest England on Thursday.
The two works of art, painted by an Italian monk known as Fra Angelico in 1439, were only found late last year after the pensioner who bought the pair for 200 pounds in the 1960s, and had little inkling of their significance, showed them to an art historian.
According to Duke's auction house in Dorchester, Dorset, the winning bidder was an anonymous European buyer, who beat out the Italian government, which had hoped to take the paintings back to Italy.
The two small portraits of saints are the missing panels from the altarpiece of the church and convent of San Marco in Florence, central Italy.
Broken up during the Napoleonic wars, six of the eight paintings that surrounded the main panel had been found and the whereabouts of the last two has been described as one of art's greatest mysteries.
They were found in November at the home of retired academic Jean Preston in Oxford, southern England, hanging behind a door in a spare room.
Preston died last year aged 77, having only recently discovered the paintings' importance.
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The two works of art, painted by an Italian monk known as Fra Angelico in 1439, were only found late last year after the pensioner who bought the pair for 200 pounds in the 1960s, and had little inkling of their significance, showed them to an art historian.
According to Duke's auction house in Dorchester, Dorset, the winning bidder was an anonymous European buyer, who beat out the Italian government, which had hoped to take the paintings back to Italy.
The two small portraits of saints are the missing panels from the altarpiece of the church and convent of San Marco in Florence, central Italy.
Broken up during the Napoleonic wars, six of the eight paintings that surrounded the main panel had been found and the whereabouts of the last two has been described as one of art's greatest mysteries.
They were found in November at the home of retired academic Jean Preston in Oxford, southern England, hanging behind a door in a spare room.
Preston died last year aged 77, having only recently discovered the paintings' importance.