Art: Raphael Revealed

Up on the easel at Sotheby’s in London, one day in 1938, was a filthy, yellowed, unframed Italian madonna. John Paul Getty gazed at it. “It looks like a Raphael,” the richest man in the world recalls muttering to himself. “I liked it.” He bid and got it for a paltry $112.

Getty kept the painting, uncleaned, in storage for a quarter-century until a year ago, when a restorer at London’s Thomas Agnew & Sons began to remove the scummy varnish. Was it Raphael’s famous Madonna di Loreto of around 1510, known through more than 30 existing copies and through art-history references? X-ray and infra-red photography at London’s Courtauld Institute probed its veil of oils, and now the best experts that Agnew can find say cautiously that the work seems to be an authentic Raphael. “The lightning strikes,” said Getty. But, he adds, “I wouldn’t dream of selling it.” It could only fetch him a million or two at the best.