A painting that hung in the kitchen of an elderly woman’s home in France for years, recently sold at auction for millions of dollars.
The work, a masterpiece titled “Christ Mocked” and attributed to the Italian painter Cimabue, sold for $26.6 million (24 million euros) to an anonymous buyer near Chantilly, north of Paris, reportedly making it the most expensive medieval painting ever sold.
(AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Art experts said the painting likely was part of a larger diptych that Cimabue painted around 1280; two other panels were displayed at the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery in London. The experts at Turquin in Paris reportedly used infrared reflectography to confirm that the piece was part of the diptych containing eight scenes of the passion and crucifixion of Christ.
The painting hung in the woman’s kitchen for so long, she told the auction house that she can’t remember where she acquired it.
