[MSN] Lost altar masterpieces found in spare bedroom fetch £1.7m

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Lost altar masterpieces found in spare bedroom fetch £1.7m

Italian ministry outbid by private buyer in Dorset sale of Fra Angelico
saints

Steven Morris
Friday April 20, 2007
The Guardian

They were discovered behind the door in a pensioner's spare room: two
small panels depicting two saintly figures.
Yesterday, having been identified as the missing pieces of the San Marco
altarpiece by the Renaissance master Fra Angelico, the pieces were sold
for £1.7m, a record for a sale outside London.

In a former egg-sorting shed at Dorchester cattle market, telephone
bidders pushed the price up. The Italian ministry of art and culture led
the charge, attempting to get back paintings that probably vanished from
Florence during Napoleon's occupation of Italy.

But the Italian ministry was pipped by an anonymous European bidder, and
the fear last night was that after having been lost for two centuries the
delicate paintings may once again disappear.
The paintings, peppered with woodworm holes, resurfaced after languishing
for the last few years on a wall at Oxford librarian Jean Preston's two
up, two down house. She had found them in a box of odds and ends in
America in the 1960s.

She did not realise what they were, but thought them "quite nice" and
mentioned them to her father, who was a collector. He paid a modest £200
and she inherited them when he died.

Miss Preston, an expert on medieval texts, carried on living an unassuming
life, travelling everywhere by bus or on foot, buying her clothes from a
catalogue and eating frozen meals, not realising she had a fortune hanging
behind the door of her spare bedroom.

It was only after her death last year that the panels came to light, to
the shock of Miss Preston's family and the art world.

The main panel, which is still at San Marco in Florence, shows the Madonna
and child. Eight smaller paintings of saints believed to have originally
been positioned in two rows of four on either side of the central image
were dispersed. Six of the eight are known to be in collections and
galleries around the world: the missing two turned out to be Miss
Preston's.

Yesterday they were to be found in the corner of Duke's saleroom in
Dorset's county town among more standard provincial auction fare:
Victorian seascapes, paintings of kittens and pheasants, bits and pieces
of dubious origin.

The bidding for Lot 150 started at £450,000. It quickly hit the £1m mark
and kept climbing.

There was a hitch when contact was lost with one telephone bidder, who was
on a train in Kent. But applause broke out as the hammer went down at
£1.7m.

Miss Preston's nephew, Martin Preston, who is selling the panels, said he
planned to celebrate with a beer at his local pub and a week of skydiving.
After tax and the lawyers' fees have been paid and the sum has been split
between a large family, he insists he personally has not made a fortune.

As to what his aunt would have made of the sale, Mr Preston said: "I don't
think it would have meant anything to her. She was not interested in money
but in the artistic worth of things. I just hope they will be seen by the
public. I think that is what Jean would have wanted."

It may be a forlorn hope. Simon Wingett, an art agent who bid in vain for
a private collector, said: "It's been an extraordinary day. A pair like
this may never come up for sale again in our lifetime. And we may never
see them again. That's the reality."

Within an hour the saleroom was clear of the dealers, the agents, the
gawping children and the two nuns who had provided just about the only
non-secular element to the sale.

And then the paintings were whisked out of public sight. The two saintly
figures - one has now been identified as the Dominican missionary St
Vincent Ferrer - spent last night in a bank vault.

They may reappear again soon. But they may be lost for another two
centuries, or more.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/