Collector's dream as an unknown Goya is confirmed

1.00pm - By ELIZABETH NASH in Madrid


It is every art collector's dream: beneath clumsy overpainting and the murk of centuries, restorers cleaning up a dirty old oil painting discover an unknown work by the Spanish master, Francisco de Goya.

Paulino Gimenez, an art restorer from Malaga, announced at the weekend after 10 months of investigation that a privately-owned painting attributed to Salvador Maella, a lesser contemporary of Goya, was actually the work of the master himself.

The newly discovered Goya is dubbed the "Inmaculada" (The Immaculate Virgin) and shows the Virgin Mary standing on clouds gazing into heaven.

It is valued at 3m euros ($5.4 million) and auction houses are already competing to take charge of the sale. The work is thought to have been painted around 1781 when Goya - then 35 and already winning important commissions - was painting similar works.

"Through x-rays and chemical investigation of the pigment and the canvas we have found several similarities between this painting and another Goya of the same period, in particular a so-called hidden face typical of Goya's work, a cat, which is the cloud on which the virgin stands," said Mr Gimenez.

Not content with his own conclusions, Mr Gimenez sought the assistance of a chemical scientist, Enrique Parra Crego of Madrid's Analytical Laboratory for the Restoration and Conservation of Artworks.

Dr Crego concluded that the preparation, materials and canvas "are consistent with the attribution to Francisco de Goya." In particular, the Inmaculada shows similarities with two of Goya's best-known works that hang in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Dr Crego's report concluded.

They are the twin scenes of Madrid's ill-fated revolt against Napoleon's occupying troops in 1808, El Dos de Mayo (Second of May) also known as La carga le los mamelucos (The Charge of the Mamelukes) and El Tres de Mayo (Third of May).

Furthermore, details of The Inmaculada are comparable to a similar work, Asunta, that Goya painted in 1781, particularly the face of one of the angels, and a shadow cast upon the arm of the virgin. That painting is privately owned.

"Everything suggests that both works were created by Goya at around the same date," says Mr Gimenez.

Another comparable painting is a Goya Crucifixion held by the Prado. The painting, dated between the late baroque and the beginnings of neo-classicism, was brought to Mr Gimenez's workshop in Malaga in January in an appalling state, the restorer told La Opinion de Malaga newspaper, which broke the story at the weekend.

Measuring 1.70m by 1.13m, the canvas was not only ravaged by the passage of more than two centuries, but had been inexpertly overpainted to obscure the painting's original religious nature, and repeatedly re-varnished.

This is not the first unrecognised Goya to have been been recently discovered. Last year two previously unknown Goyas were found by chance when experts went to value another painting in a collector's home in Madrid. They found one Goya on a bedroom wall, another lurking in the dark corridor. The owner had no idea who painted the works and had considered them of little value.

The two works, La Sagrada Famila (The Holy Family) and Tobias y el Angel (Tobias and the Angel), dated around 1787, were put on sale and snapped up by the Prado. But Mr Gimenez had every reason to be cautious before going public with his discovery.

In 1996 the director of the Prado Jose Maria Luzon was swept from office in disgrace after he announced with huge fanfare the discovery of a hitherto unknown Goya, during the restoration of General Franco's former torture chambers in the heart of Madrid.

That painting, described by Mr Luzon as "a cracker of a Goya" turned out to be the work of Salvador Maella, and was already registered in Madrid's city archives. A preliminary sketch was even logged in the Prado's own records as a Maella.

But latterly it has become more usual to demote existing Goyas than discover new ones. The authenticity of 150 of Goya's prodigious output of around 500 works has been challenged down the years.

Three years ago, the British Goya scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau claimed El Coloso (The Colossos) and La Lechera de Burdeos (The Milkmaid of Bordeaux), late works on show in the Prado, were painted by someone else.

And last year the Madrid art historian Juan Jose Junquera even disputed Goya's celebrated Black Paintings, jewels in the crown of the Prado's extensive collection. Mr Junquera claimed these scenes of despair and chaos were probably painted by the artist's son Javier.

- INDEPENDENT