A $6.5M Cimabue Painting Has Been Chilling in a French Woman's Kitchen for Decades

HYPERALLERGIC
By Sarah Rose Sharp

Cimabue, private collection, The Mocking of Christ, ornamental border on a gold ground. Image courtesy of Eric Turquin and Actéon.

Kids may say the darndest things, but you really have to give it to old people for sometimes eccentrically hoarding the darndest Medieval masterwork paintings. That’s the case this week, as a discovery made in June by Philomène Wolf, auctioneer for Actéon, a small auction house from the French town of Senlis, is a small-scale work of devotion among the authenticated works by the Florentine painter Cenni di Pepo, also known as Cimabue — hailed as the first truly great creator of Tuscan painting and active in the years 1272 to 1302. Wolf came across the unsigned 10×8 inch tempera-on-panel painting hanging above a hot plate in the home of an elderly French woman in Compiegne, who was selling her home.[More]