Four previously unknown paintings by the 16th-century French maestro, Nicolas Poussin, are to go on exhibition in Rome next weekend, according to the Italian arts magazine, Quadri e Sculture.
The key figure in what appears to be one of the most significant art finds of the last decade is the art historian, Sir Denis Mahon, who comes from a well-known Co Galway banking family and whose parents were Irish. Sir Denis came across perhaps the most important of the paintings, The Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem, at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1995.
Sir Denis was involved in the verification process that led to the discovery in Dublin of the Caravaggio painting, The Capture of Christ, now on display at the National Gallery.
Like the Dublin Caravaggio, the Poussin painting had been wrongly titled and attributed, in this case to an Italian painter, Pietro Testa, and named The Sack of Carthage.
When it was originally presented at Sotheby's, it was felt that The Sack of Carthage might fetch between £16,000 and £17,000. By the time Sir Denis had verified its authenticity, its value had risen so much that its current owner, the art house Hazlett, Gooden and Fox, is reported to have recently refused £4.8 million for it.
The Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem and three other previously unknown Poussin paintings also discovered by Sir Denis, Narcissus, The Fall of the Giants and Apollo and Marsius, were all painted in Rome between 1625 and 1627.