Sir Peter Paul Rubens Rubens Were Not Looted By Nazis, Panel Decides Family of Art Dealer Killed by Nazis Sues Germany for Damages Rubens to Remain in the U.K. Old Master Paintings Louvre to Loan Paintings to Japan U.K. Crime Family Convicted and Sentenced for £82.5 Million Art Burglaries Sheldonian Theater Painting at Oxford Restored

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

The painting, an early 17th-century oil on wood panel known as The Calydonian Boar Hunt, has been labeled a "rediscovered" work because it had previously only been known from the artist’s later versions on this subject—until this work resurfaced in London recently.

Brand noted that Rubens repeatedly painted the boar-hunting scene, which is an episode drawn from the poetry of Ovid, but that the Getty's version appears to be the artist's first oil work on the subject.

Museum officials said they bought the work in late April from a London dealer but declined to disclose the price. However, a smaller Rubens oil sketch of the same subject sold for $5.4 million at Christie's London auction house just a few months prior.

Rubens is among the Old Master artists whose works have skyrocketed in value as art prices have inflated in recent years. In 2002, his work The Massacre of the Innocents fetched $76.7 million at Sotheby's.

The Los Angeles Times: Getty Fattens its Rubens Trove