Lost Caravaggio painting found in attic could go under hammer for USD 171 million

Washington: At a press conference at Colnaghi, Thursday, art appraiser Eric Turquin announced that a painting discovered in 2014 is a lost work of the Italian master Caravaggio: ‘Judith and Holofernes,’ believed to have been painted in 1607.
When discovered in the attic of a house in Toulouse, the painting was coated in dust and stained by a water look. It took five years for experts to come to a conclusion regarding the five feet tall and six feet wide work of art.
On June 27, Labarbe will auction it in Toulouse, where it is expected to sell for up to 150 million Euros (USD 171 million), reported CNN.
“This is the greatest painting I’ve ever found,” said Turquin, adding, “It’s very violent. It’s almost unbearable. But he’s an artist who embodies the text — he makes the text living.” The text in question is the Book of Judith, found in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox versions of the Old Testament.
According to the Old Testament, Judith was a widow from the city of Bethulia, under siege by the army of Assyrian general Holofernes. To save her city, she seduced the general in his tent before beheading him, as Caravaggio’s painting viscerally depicts.