There’s a good chance that the range hood above your oven is nothing more than a noisy source of light collecting grease and food juice from whatever it is you’re cooking below.
But for this French woman, it was a multi-million dollar goldmine.
According to the ABC, a long-lost Renaissance masterpiece painted by the great Italian painter Cimabue has been discovered hanging in the home of an elderly Parisian woman.
The 13th century painting is estimated to be worth between 6 and 9 MILLION AUD, was found hanging between the woman’s kitchen and sitting room directly above a hotplate for cooking food.
Sounds like ignorance wasn’t blissful this time around.
Thinking the painting was just an old religious icon, the elderly French woman took it to her local auctioneers who undoubtedly would have been SHOOKETH TO THE CORE.
ABC reports that the painting is thought to be part of a large diptych dating all the way back to 1280, “when Cimabue painted eight scenes depicting Christ’s passion and crucifixion.”
Art expert Eric Turquin told French newspaper Le Figaro there’s “no disputing” the origins of the artwork. “The painting was done by the same hand,” as two other scenes from the work hanging in galleries in London and New York.
Credi: AAP Image/UIG/Mondadori Electa
This isn’t the first time an expensive artwork has been hanging right under our noses. In 2014, a long-lost Carvaggio painting if Judith Beheading Holofernes dated back to 1607 was found in an attic and later sold for over $240M AUD.
In 2015, a local man helping his elderly neighbour move found was going through his garage and found an LA Laker poster signed by Kobe Bryant and an untitled masterpiece by Jackson Pollock.
The Cimabue piece goes under the hammer on October 27.