Raphael: A Great “Antiques Roadshow”
Can you imagine the look on the face of that farmer from Arkansas when the “Antiques Roadshow” expert said that the Madonna he’d bought at a church social wasn’t a $25 copy but an original Raphael, worth $25 million? Even I could be coaxed to watch that episode. Here’s the real story: ‘The National Trust of Scotland has discovered in one of its stately homes a painting that art historians believe is likely to be a work by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael. The painting had been obscured by discolored varnish and was attributed to a minor hand. Its potential as a work of one of the giants of art history was initially spotted by the historian Bendor Grosvenor.’
