A painting misidentified for hundreds of years will be auctioned at Sotheby's in London next month and is expected to fetch $7.7 million, according to a report in ARTnews. The sale will be the first for the painting since it was confirmed to have been painted by Peter Paul Rubens, the outlet further said. When it was last sold in 2008 for $40,000, it was wrongly attributed as the work of French artist Laurent de la Hyre. The auction had generated a lot of attention and soon after, scholars identified it as a lost Rubens.
The painting, titled Saint Sebastian Tended By Angels, is displayed at Galleria Corsini in Rome. But when this painting was attributed to Rubens, both were placed side-by-side in 2021 exhibition in Germany, where scholars said the once-misidentified painting was the original, and the one hanging in Corsini a copy.
Sotheby's quoted art historian Anna Orlando while describing the painting on its website. "The very useful direct comparison between the two on the occasion of the exhibition in Stuttgart in 2021 would seem to reveal the higher quality of the work in private hands."
CNN said the original was identified with the help of X-ray analysis. The painting depicts the story of the Roman soldier Sebastian, pierced by soldiers' arrows and left to die after he converted to Christianity, before angels miraculously intervene.
Scholars believe the painting was originally commissioned by Italian nobleman and military commander Ambrogio Spinola and was completed in early 1600s, as per the CNN report.
The painting left a "forceful impression" on George Gordon, Sotheby's co-chairman of old master paintings worldwide.
"It's the liveliness of the brushwork. So it was easy to appreciate the speed and the vivacity with which it was painted, which seemed to me to speak very strongly for Rubens' own brush," Mr Gordon told CNN.
The outlet said the painting disappeared from the recorded history in 1730s and reappeared in Missouri in 1963.
