Italy Loses Fra Angelico Altarpieces, Again

Back in November, I posted about some recently rediscovered Renaissance altarpiece panels. Here’s the followup:

Word was, a modest Oxford librarian named Miss Jean Preston had hung the tiny gold-leaf panels on the back of her guest room door. She thought them “quite nice.”

Last Thursday, having been discovered to be lost masterpieces by Renaissance master Fra Angelico, they sold for $3.4 million.

Back in the 1960s, she had found them in a “box of odds and ends” while traveling in America and had convinced her father to buy them for £200—never suspecting that they had been commissioned back in 1440 by Florentine banker Cosimo de’ Medici.

The Italian government tried, in vain, to buy them back, presumably to hang in the Museo de San Marco, next to the main panel of the altarpiece. But a deeper-pocketed private European collector reportedly prevailed. Pity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 5:48 am and is filed under Fine Art, Barn, Basement and Attic Finds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.