A drawing bought for $40 at a garage sale in 2017 has been confirmed to be a rare 16th century, Albrecht Dürer artwork.
Imagine searching through sticky box sets of Downton Abbey and Coronation Street at a neighbour’s garage sale, when you stumble upon a beautiful old drawing, which according to your neighbour is worth $40.
Then a few years later, you have the artwork examined out of curiosity and discover that your $40 drawing is actually an extremely rare Renaissance artwork worth $A14 million.
The artwork was determined to be The Virgin and Child by Albrecht Dürer, a German artist who died in 1528.
Dürer is widely regarded as the greatest German artist of his time, and undiscovered artworks of his are rarely found.
The art collector who examined the drawing, Clifford Schorer doesn’t hold high hopes when he hears of rare artworks that have been uncovered.
“Generally speaking it’s an inverse relationship between how dramatic the claim is and how much of a let down it is,” he said.
When Schorer first saw the garage sale pick-up, he said, “It was like [experiencing] a kind of electricity.”
“When you’re in my world you spend your life looking for unknown things that lead to fascinating research avenues… and I could see I was at the beginning of something extremely exciting.”
The Boston-based art collector spent the next three years verifying the artwork. A process which involved 17 international flights to consult experts word wide, including an analysis at the British Museum in London.
It was there that the artwork was determined to be of high value, after it was compared to other Dürer drawings.
The owner of the artwork has remained anonymous, but you’d imagine he’d be pretty chuffed about his sixth-sense for bargain hunting.
