Little did they know that the sculpture was to be found in the garden of a British couple. The artwork could now fetch several million pounds when it goes up for auction at Christie’s.
The couple acquired the sculpture in 2002 at an auction of garden statues in Sussex, England. It was described as “A white marble figure of a young woman” and was attributed to an unknown artist.
The heavily damaged and blackened work sold for £5,200 (about $6,800), a thousand times less than its current low estimate.
“Recumbent Magdalene” will go under the hammer on July 7 during Christie’s prestigious “classic week.” The auction house has estimated it to fetch between £5 and £8 million.
The statue could set a new sales record for the Venetian sculptor and painter, Antonio Canova. This currently stands at £5.3 million, following the sale of “Bust of Peace” at Sotheby’s London in 2018.
The sculpture was made between 1819 and 1822, at the request of Robert Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool and then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
It first appeared on the market in 1852, after the death of Robert Jenkinson’s brother and heir.
Its attribution to Canova seems to have been lost around 1920, when Herbert Smith, a carpet manufacturer, purchased it along with the Witley Court mansion.
The appeal of rediscovered artworks
“It is a miracle that Antonio Canova’s exceptional, long-lost masterpiece the ‘Recumbent Magdalene’ has been found, 200 years after its completion. This work has been searched for by scholars for decades,” said Mario Guderzo, a leading Canova scholar and former Director of the Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova and Museo Biblioteca Archivio di Bassano del Grappa.
“The re-discovery of the ‘Recumbent Magdalene’ brings to a conclusion a very particular story worthy of a novel, of a marble of significant historical value and great aesthetic beauty produced by Canova in the final years of his artistic activity.”
“Rediscovered” works of art have been causing excitement in the art market in recent years.
These can be artworks that have long been off the radar, not to mention previously unseen pieces that were never known to exist, or works that have recently been reattributed to significant artists, such as “Recumbent Magdalene.”
And bids can rise quickly when a rediscovered treasure goes under the hammer. Take “The Angel in a Yellow Tunic” by the German painter Bernhard Strigel.
This long-lost painting was sold for €2.8 million in February – five times its low estimate of €600,000 – after spending 30 years in the attic of a family in Toulouse, France. It is likely that “Recumbent Magdalene” is destined for a similar fate.