Found in a barn, this painting "covered in droppings" which is worth millions will be put up for sale in New York

Between two and three million dollars for a painting discovered in a barn. On January 26, the American auction house Sotheby’s will auction at New York a work by the 17th century Flemish painter, Antoine van Dyck (1599-1641), reports knowledge of the arts Monday January 23. What is special about this study in oil? It was not kept in a museum, but was exhumed from a barn in Kinderhook, a small town of nearly 8,000 inhabitants in the state of New York, in the United States only lined with a few droppings. In 2002, collector Albert B. Roberts acquired this painting for the modest sum of 600 euros. Twenty years later, it could be worth 500,000 times more.

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Van Dych, Assistant to Rubens

The work, entitled “Saint Jerome”, considered the patron saint of translators, represents a naked old man, with marked features and a slumped posture, seeming to be an allegory of fragility and vulnerability. Authenticated in 2019 by an art historian, this canvas was produced by van Dyck in Antwerp, Belgium, where he officiated alongside Pierre Paul Rubens (1577-1640), one of the most famous Flemish masters. His baroque portraits, on which appear individuals in their simplest attire, contributed to his notoriety, which spread across Europe.

Like his master, van Dyck focused on staging fragile, vulnerable subjects, whose affliction was confused with sacrifice. Because everything converges towards religious figures in the Flemish paintings, like the Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1615-1616). This painting is kept at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels.

⋙ Rubens, the Flemish master

Favorite painter of a king of England

During his career, Antoine van Dyck sailed from his native Flanders to London, England, where he decided to end his life. His talents as a portrait painter earned him the title of favorite artist of King Charles I (1625-1649). With the royal crown, the Antwerper will renew the model of the portrait by removing the Christlike and superhuman character and developing a posture closer to reality. Van Dyck’s canvases served as a model for many English painters in the 18th century.

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