French art expert insists lost painting is a Caravaggio
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French art expert Eric Turquin is not only convinced that a canvas found in the attic of an old house in southwest France is a Caravaggio but also that it is a revolutionary masterpiece.
France’s leading authority on Old Masters paintings has staked his reputation on the assertion that the work is the fiery Italian artist’s lost “Judith and Holofernes”.
Visitors on Friday were given one last chance to admire a 400-year-old painting found in an attic in southern France and attributed to Italian master Caravaggio, or raise questions about the work, before it goes on the auction block.
Paris auction house Drouot invited visitors to see “Judith Beheading Holofernes” five years after it was found in a Toulouse home. It depicts the biblical heroine Judith beheading an Assyrian general. It’s thought to have been painted in Rome around 1604-05.
Turquin was quoted as insisting that it should sell for between 100 and 150 million euros and insisted that not only is it a Caravaggio, but of all the Caravaggios that are known today, this is one of the great pictures.
Experts in Italy believe it is a copy made by the Flemish artist Louis Finson, who worked alongside Caravaggio as he painted. But Turquin is adamant it is the original from 1606 whose existence was first noted in letters between Italian dukes and art dealers four centuries ago.
The piece is being auctioned on June 27 in Toulouse.
