A 13th-century painting found hanging over the kitchen stove of an elderly French woman and later sold for €24m (£21m) at auction has been acquired by the Louvre after a ban on its exportation.
The Paris museum says the pre-Renaissance painting, now one of the oldest works in its collection, will be the centrepiece of an exhibition in 2025 after a four-year effort to keep it in France.
Christ Mocked was painted by the Florentine artist Cimabue around 1280. It is believed to be one of eight panels from a large diptych, five of which are still missing.
The painting was heading for the rubbish tip during a house clearance when the owner’s family called in an expert to see if there was anything of value in the property. Thinking the work could be worth up to €400,000, the expert sent it to an art specialist in Paris who declared it to be a genuine Cimabue.
In 2019, the Louvre hoped to acquire the painting when it came up for auction, with an estimated value of between €4m-€6m. The museum lost out when the hammer came down on a record €19.5m bid, a total sale price of €24m with fees.
France’s culture ministry promptly declared the work a “national treasure” and placed the painting under a temporary export ban, giving the Louvre 30 months to raise the necessary funds to buy it.
Cimabue was born in Florence and died in Pisa. He is often credited with teaching the more famous Florentine artist Giotto, who greatly eclipsed him, but some art scholars dispute this link.
Christ Mocked measures just over 25cm (10in) by 20cm and depicts the mocking of Jesus before his crucifixion. It is painted on a gold-leaf background on a poplar wood panel.
Only two other panels in the series have been found: The Flagellation of Christ is held by the Frick Collection in New York; and The Virgin and Child with Two Angels is at the National Gallery in London. The National Gallery describes the series as representing “a crucial moment in the history of art” when Italian painters moved towards more realistic depictions of their subjects.
Only about a dozen works attributed to Cimabue, who did not sign his paintings, are known to exist.
The Louvre already has a much larger Cimabue painting on display, the Maestà. Also completed around 1280, the work measures almost 4.3 metres high by more than 2.7 metres wide and is undergoing restoration. The museum says both Cimabues will be put on display in the first half of 2025.
Neither the culture ministry nor the Louvre has given details of how much it paid for Christ Mocked or how the money was raised to buy it except that it involved an “exceptional mobilisation” to encourage donations from patrons who were offered tax exemptions.
The original owner, who was in her 90s and had moved to a care home, was unable to enjoy the sudden windfall, having died two days after the auction.