Lost Rubens Crucifixion Sells for 2.94 Million Euros

A long-lost painting of Jesus Christ's crucifixion by 17th-century Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens sold for 2.94 million euros, including fees, at an auction in Versailles, France, on Sunday, far exceeding its presale estimate of 1 million to 2 million euros.

The artwork, titled Christ on the Cross and created around 1613, measures 105.5 by 72.5 centimeters and depicts the dead body of Christ isolated against a dark, threatening sky, with blood and water flowing from a wound in his side. Auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat discovered the canvas last year while appraising items in a private Paris townhouse ahead of its sale. "I immediately had a hunch about this painting," Osenat told reporters, "and I did everything I could to try to have it authenticated."

For more than 400 years, the painting had been hidden from public view, its existence known only through an engraving made by one of Rubens's contemporaries shortly after its completion. Historians had cataloged it based on that image alone, without ever seeing the original. The piece later entered the collection of 19th-century French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau and passed down through his family, where it...