Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – The Louvre Museum in the French capital, Paris, added a “national treasure” to its collection, four years after it was discovered during a house cleaning operation.
The painting “The Mockery of Christ” by the Florentine painter Cimabue was found inside the home of an elderly woman in the town of Compiegne, in 2019. The woman had kept the rare artwork in her kitchen, because she believed it was a Greek religious icon.
Jérôme Munkockil of the art company Cabin Turquin, which was instructed to conduct tests on the painting after its discovery, said that the owner of the piece did not know where the painting, which measures 25.4 x 20.32 square centimeters (10 x 8 inches), came from.
The painting, which dates back to the year 1280, achieved approximately 24.2 million euros ($26.8 million) at an auction organized in October 2019, more than four times its pre-sale estimate.
But the French government intervened and prevented the export of the painting, which was labeled a “national treasure.”
The move kept the small, extremely rare painting in the country for 30 months, during which the government raised money to buy it.
Now, French Minister of Culture Rima Abdel Malik and Laurence de Carre, President and Director of the Louvre Museum, have announced that the painting forms part of the museum’s collection.
The ministry stated in a statement that “these acquisitions were made as a result of exceptional mobilization operations for the Louvre Museum, which allows the works to which the largest museums in the world aspire to be preserved in France and made available to everyone,” without providing any other details about how the funds were collected.
The ministry described the painting as “an important achievement in the history of art, and represents a wonderful transition from icon art to painting.”
The ministry added that only about 15 of Cimabue’s works are known, which is why the painting is considered a “national treasure of great importance.”
The piece will join Cimabue’s larger painting “Maesta” in the Louvre collection, and the two works will form part of the exhibition event taking place in the spring of 2025, according to the ministry.
Cimabue is the pseudonym of the artist Cini di Beppo, who was born in Florence around 1240. He is known to have discovered and taught Giotto, who is widely considered one of the greatest artists of the pre-Renaissance era.
The Mockery of Christ, part of a diptych, consists of eight scenes centered around Christ’s passion and crucifixion.
The National Museum in the British capital, London, houses the other painting from the work, “The Virgin and Child with Two Angels,” which it acquired in 2000. It had been lost for several centuries, before a British aristocrat found it in his ancestral home in Suffolk, according to what Agence France-Presse reported. “.
Another painting entitled “The Flagellation of Christ” can be found in the Frick Collection in New York City, USA.
