An Otto van Veen painting discovered in an Iowa closet could be worth more than $4 million, but for now the 400-year-old-or-so masterpiece is not for sale.
The painting, titled "Apollo and Venus," didn’t have to travel far to an art gallery because it was already in one. Robert Warren, executive director of Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines told Iowa Public Radio he was looking for Civil War flags in 2016 when he found the painting tucked in a little-used storeroom under the auditorium's balcony.
"I was a little surprised, because it's a wood panel painting," Warren told WHO-TV. "I didn't really know much about it until I looked at the back of it and I could see the webbing and then the contents of the front was so badly damaged and there were water stains on it, in a room filled with junk. I had no idea that it was as valuable as it turned out to be."
The valuable painting was wedged between a table and a plaster wall, Iowa Pubic Radio said. A tag on the painting said it had been donated to the Des Moines Women's Club at Hoyt Sherman in 1923.
"I'm sure it's severely undervalued because it was listed for $1,500 when it first came into possession of the women's club," Warren told Iowa Public Radio. "The assumption was it was tucked away there either because it needed some repair work or the content because it is a full backside nude of Venus de Milo and another cherub sans clothing."
Hoyt Sherman Place, which unveiled the restored painting last month, said it took four months of work to return the painting to its original visual appearance. Cleaners used organic solvents to swell and remove discolored films without injury to the paint surface.
"The scene depicts the figures of Apollo and Venus accompanied by her son Cupid," the gallery said. "…The painting also contains four still-lifes referencing Venus' beauty and fertility: a collection of jewelry, a basket of fruit and flowers, a sprig of roses, and a bowl of oysters. A fifth still-life of her painting supplies occupies the lower right corner."
Warren told WHO-TV he learned the painting was created between 1595 and 1600 and once hung in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in the 1880s. The Collins family of New York, who owned the painting, moved to Iowa before donating it to the Des Moines Women's Club at Hoyt Sherman.
The work of Otto van Veen is shown in every major museum and his pieces have been valued from $4 million and $17 million, Warren told WHO-TV. Van Veen was best known for training Peter Paul Rubens.
"So, we think it's somewhere in that range, but until it's fully installed and we get an appraiser out here, we can only speculate," Warren said, who added that for now the painting will be part of the Hoyt Sherman art gallery collection.
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