In 2016, an estate sale in Concord, Massachusetts, sold two items to a man: a fake jade necklace for a dollar, and a drawing of the Virgin Mary and Child for US$30.
This unsuspecting small drawing, titled The Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bench, turned out to be a potential long-lost, undiscovered piece by the renowned 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer.
The reports that a panel of British Museum experts has dubbed it “one of the most extraordinary discoveries of Renaissance artwork in years.” Given its staggering value, the artwork might be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Brainerd Phillipson, the owner of a rare book shop in Massachusetts, happened to be friends with the owner of the drawing—the man who purchased it for US$30—who chooses to remain anonymous. Entirely by chance, he was in conversation with Clifford Schorer, an art dealer from Boston, who was late to a retirement party in 2019 and stopped by his store to pick up a last-minute gift.
Phillipson mentioned that he had a friend who had this drawing, which they thought could be a Dürer work. Plus, the initials signed on it read “A.D.” He put his friend in connection with Schorer, who visited his house to see the piece a few days later.
“I sat down at his dinner table, looked at the drawing and went silent. He asked me if I was all right and then walked into the next room to watch American Pickers,” Schorer recalls to the New York Post.
“I said, ‘This is either a masterpiece or the greatest fraud in the world.’”
Schorer paid the man US$100,000 in advance to sell the drawing, then almost lost that when he was told a few days later that the drawing had been “artificially aged,” where tea or coffee had been used to stain the drawing to make it look older.
However, hope came in the form of a watermark: Dürer always used a watermark depicting a trident with a ring next to it. It was made by Jakob Fugger, who controlled a large part of the European economy in his time and who Dürer served as a court artist. Fugger made the paper for him.
When a translucent light was shone through the paper, the trident appeared.
It hasn’t been confirmed how much the drawing will be valued when it does go on sale, but Schorer has speculated promising numbers. He has stated that it could be the most valuable piece by a Renaissance master to hit the market after a Raphael sketch sold for US$48 million in 2012.
The Virgin and Child with a Flower on a Grassy Bench was just displayed at the Agnews Gallery in London as part of the show Dürer and his Time. There are plans for the piece to be transferred to the Colnaghi in New York next month.
[via the
http://www.designtaxi.com/news/417166/30-Sketch-Is-Discovered-To-Be-Long-Lost-Renaissance-Masterpiece-Worth-A-Fortune/
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