Claim: lost da Vinci found in Scotland
08/07/2012
When 59-year-old Fiona McLaren of Scotland fell on hard times recently, she took an old oil painting that had been gathering dust in her home for decades to be appraised.
The reaction from Harry Robertson, the director of Sotheby’s in Scotland, indicated it might have some value: “I showed it to him and he was staggered, speechless save for a sigh of exclamation,” McLaren said.
That would be because the painting, shown above, may well be a previously unknown work by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci and worth more $150 million.
The 23-inch-by-28-inch painting depicts a woman holding a young child and had been collecting dust in Fiona McLaren’s home for decades, according to The Daily Mail.
The painting may be of Mary Magdalene. It is now being analyzed by experts at the Cambridge University and the Hamilton Kerr Institute, the publication added.
The painting came into the possession of the McLaren family through her late father George, a doctor who had received it as a gift from a patient in the 1960s, according to the Global Post.
