Recently, the New York Museum of Metropolitan (Metropolitan) has acquired for his collection of drawing entitled «The Archangel Gabriel heralds the birth of Christ», made by famous masters of Northern Renaissance Luke Leiden (Lucas van Leyden, 1494-1533). Drawings of the artist is valued its weight in gold: it is known with 27 of his drawings. Before buying a museum «Archangel Gabriel» in the United States there was not one of his works. Figure was purchased from unnamed British collector with the mediation of the auction house Sotheby's. The deal has not been disclosed, but said that the price of the graphic works of a few thousand (if not tens of thousands) of dollars.

It should be noted that for the album, which included drawing Luke Leiden, the former owner paid for the auction's total Shristie ... 393 dollars. How could this happen? The thing is that three years ago, Christie's wrong to attribute the work.

In June 2005, at the tender Maritime Pictures and Watercolours, arranged Christie's in London, selling British album of landscape studies watercolourist XIX century Uiteringtona William Frederick (William Frederick Witherington). In addition to works by the artist, the album entered «neobramlenny picture of old masters, executed the other hand». A British collector bought the work for 393 dollars and then sold to another collector. He and noticed on the back of the pencil inscription L van Leyden . Learning that Luke was a famous painter of Leiden XVI century, the owner brought the figure head of graphics Old Masters auction house Sotheby's Gregory Rubinstein (Gregory Rubinstein). Rubinstein, who is an expert on the art of the Netherlands, immediately realized that, most likely, his lucky customer bought the original. He asked the experts Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), and together they found that «Archangel Gabriel» is a pair of the famous drawing by Luke Leiden, depicting the Virgin Mary. Soon was a deal with the Metropolitan Museum.

newspaper, The New York Sun asked the representative of Christie's Japan Soldering (Rick Pike), as the auction house can «browse» a masterpiece, and attribute it as the creation of an unknown master. After all, was the signature on the back of Luke Leiden and at the front part - literary L. Perhaps, the specialists decided to auction, that figure - Counterfeiting? According to Paik, Christie's now dealing with this issue.

The word on the purchase of the Metropolitan Museum of scattered all over the world. On it, perhaps, learn, and the collector that the figure given Christie's. If at auction attribute work correctly, the owner sold it to get much larger amount of money. Rick Paik declined to say whether this collector to complain or not.

Sources: www.nytimes.com , www.nysun.com , artinvestment.ru