She Thought She Had A Fake Renaissance Painting Hanging Up In Her Kitchen, But It Turns Out It’s Real, And Worth As Much As $6.6 Million Dollars

Hanging above the stove in a French woman’s house was an old painting she believed to be a knock-off.
However, the artwork turned out to be a genuine Renaissance masterpiece that was over 700 years old and worth millions of dollars.
The value of the painting was discovered when a woman in Compiègne, France, decided to sell her house and some of her possessions.
She reached out to Actéon, an auction house from the town of Senlis, to get the items appraised. That’s when auctioneer Philomène Wolf encountered the centuries-old painting.
“You rarely see something of such quality,” Wolf said. “I immediately thought it was a work of Italian primitivism. But I didn’t imagine it was a Cimabue.”
It is believed to be an original, unsigned painting titled Mocking of Christ by Renaissance artist Cenni di Pepo, also known as Cimabue.
The painting makes up one panel of a three-part work. Initially, Wolf estimated the painting’s value to be up to $440,000.
But, after taking the painting to Eric Turquin, a well-known appraiser in Paris, its worth has shot up 15 times higher than the original estimate.
Turquin thinks the piece could sell for between $4.4 million and $6.6 million. According to the appraiser, the painting has evidence of wormholes, which are indicative of its authenticity.

benevolente – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
All three panels of Cimabue should show signs of destruction from timber-loving insects. If the holes that the bugs chewed line up with each other, that means the three panels make up the same piece.
“You can follow the tunnels made by the worms,” Turquin said. “It’s the same poplar panel…we have objective proof it’s by the artist.”
The newly discovered painting from Cimabue will be auctioned off on October 27. It will likely be sold for millions of dollars.
Cimabue was a 13th-century Italian painter from Florence. He is generally regarded as one of the first Italian painters to stray from the Italo-Byzantine style. He was also known for mentoring Giotto di Bondone, another famous artist.
The other two panels from the three-part work include the Flagellation of Christ, which is displayed in the Frick Collection in New York.
The Madonna and Child Enthroned Between Two Angels is housed in the National Gallery in London.
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