Courtesy Sloans & Kenyon

An 18th-century painting of Venice's Grand Canal is believed to be the most expensive painting ever sold at an auction in the Washington, D.C., area.

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Estimated at a modest $6,000 to $8,000, the painting is from the "school of" the 18th-century artist Giovanni Antonio Canaletto. Thirteen phone bidders competed against live bidders at the Sloans & Kenyon auction house in Chevy Chase, Md., which had received the work from a Bethesda woman who has requested anonymity. The painting had been in the family since 1881, when her grandmother brought it back from Europe. After a flurry of escalating offers, it sold to a floor bidder, an agent for a London buyer, for $575,000 plus a 19.5 percent buyer's premium. "This appears to be the highest price ever obtained for a work of art sold at auction in the metropolitan Washington area," said a Sloans & Kenyon spokeswoman.

Read more at the Washington Post.