Valuable 350-year-old oil paintings found in skip
Valuable 350-year-old oil paintings found in skip
German police have SLOTXO issued an appeal for information after two valuable
17th Century paintings were discovered dumped in a road-side skip.
The oil paintings are believed to be by Dutch artist Samuel van Hoogstraten and
Italian Pietro Bellotti, police said.
A man found the paintings at a motorway service station on the A7 south of Würzburg
in Bavaria last month.
He handed them in to police in the city of Cologne. No one has yet claimed
the artworks.
An initial assessment by an art expert concluded the two framed paintings were
originals, police said.
One is a portrait of a boy wearing a red hat with an unknown date. Police say it was
painted by Samuel van Hoogstraten, a painter and writer who lived in the Netherlands
between 1627 and 1678.
The other is a smiling self-portrait by Pietro Bellotti, a lesser-known Italian painter
who lived from 1625 to 1700.
Police in Cologne are appealing for anyone who recognises the artworks or
who knows how they ended up in the skip to come forward. |
