Spanish experts discover unknown Van Dyck work

Experts at a Spanish museum have revealed a previously-unknown work by the 17th-century Flemish master Anthony van Dyck, a museum official said on Thursday.

The Virgin and Child with Repentant Sinners depicts the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms watched by Mary Magdalene, King David and the Prodigal Son.

The masterpiece had lain in a warehouse of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid for more than a century and was believed to be a copy, said the museum official, who asked not be named.

But since last July restorers have undertaken a painstaking study of the work using pigment and X-ray analysis, and confirmed it to be the work of Van Dyck, the official said.

“It is confirmed that it’s a Van Dyck,” said the museum official, backing up a report in Spain’s leading daily El Pais. “All the analyses have confirmed it.”

The picture, painted in Italy around 1625, was originally part of the collection of the Duke of Medina de las Torres, the Spanish viceroy of Naples.

In the middle of the 17th century it was transferred to the monastery of El Escorial outside Madrid, where it survived the pillaging of the Napoleonic invasion of 1808.

Some time later it was taken to the San Fernando museum.

Van Dyck completed some 800 paintings before his death at the age of 42 in 1641.

A self-portrait by Van Dyck painted in the last months before he died sold for €9.5 million at an auction held in London in 2009.