Caravaggio found in attic sold to mystery foreign buyer

It was estimated to sell on Thursday in Toulouse, France, for at least $110 million, the highest auction price ever achieved for any artwork in Europe. Then on Tuesday came the announcement that the auction of “Judith and Holofernes,” an early 17th-century canvas billed as a rediscovered masterpiece by Caravaggio, had been cancelled. The painting had been sold privately to a collector outside France, the auctioneers Marc Labarbe and Eric Turquin said in a statement.
Both the identity of the buyer and the purchase price were covered by a confidentiality clause, the statement said. The painting will “soon be exhibited in an important museum” where it will “finally come into the light for all to see,” it added.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Turquin, a Paris-based expert and dealer in old master paintings, declined to name the museum. Turquin has spent five years researching and marketing the painting after its discovery by Labarbe in the attic of a house in Toulouse in April 2014. He said the price accepted by the owners was more than the minimum bid level of €30 million, or about $34 million, that had been planned for the auction.
The painting, which had been kept in the attic “for at least 100 years”, is the second by Caravaggio to depict the decapitation of the drunken Holofernes by Judith. The first, dating from around 1600, is on display at the Barberini Palace in Rome.