France has blocked the export of a Renaissance masterpiece discovered in a French woman’s kitchen and subsequently auctioned for more than 24 million euros (£20.5m), making it the most expensive medieval painting ever sold, reports The Telegraph.
Christ Mocked, by the 13th-century Florentine painter Cimabue, was sold to two US-based private collectors in October.
The French government has refused to grant an export certificate on the grounds that the tiny picture is a “national treasure”.
This gives the state 30 months to find funding to buy it so it can be exhibited alongside another much larger Cimbabue work, the four-metre high Santa Trinita Maestà, at the Louvre museum in Paris.
The painting on a wooden panel, which measures only 8 by 11.2 inches, is believed to have hung for decades above a hotplate in an elderly woman’s house near Compiègne, north of Paris. Coated in grime, it was spotted by an auctioneer who came to value her furniture after she was placed in an old people’s home.
The work is unsigned but has been attributed by experts to Cimbabue, also known as Cenni di Pepo. They used infrared reflectography to confirm that it was part of a larger diptych from 1280, when Cimbabue painted eight scenes of the passion and crucifixion of Christ.
A crowd of about 800 people who attended its auction fell silent as bids far exceeded the initial valuation of £5 million.