(CBS/AP) Two compact Renaissance masterpieces found hanging in a retiree's suburban house have sold at auction for almost $3.4 million.

The two small panels, by Italian artist-monk Fra Angelico, were bought by an anonymous European bidder on Thursday at Duke's auction house in the southwestern English town of Dorchester. The purchaser outbid the Italian government, which had hoped to return the works to its homeland.

Auction house spokesman Guy Schwinge said he didn't know whether the paintings would leave Britain.

The 15th-century paintings, which depict two Dominican saints against a background of exquisite gold, hung for years in the Oxford home of retired manuscript librarian Jean Preston. She had bought them in California in the 1960s for a few hundred dollars.

CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar says the panels are barely five inches wide. She points out that Fra Angelico is considered one of the great masters of Italian Renaissance art, and has himself been beatified as a painter of holy images.

The panels originally formed part of the altarpiece of the church and convent of St. Marco in Florence. The paintings were commissioned by the banker Cosimo de Medici and his brother Lorenzo, but were separated and scattered when Napoleon invaded Italy in the 1790s.

Six of the eight panels were later found, but the fate of the remaining two remained a mystery until they were identified last year by an art expert contacted by Preston.

"She said 'Oh my! That is very interesting,' " said art historian Michael Liversidge, who identified the works. "I think she was extremely pleased that what they were had been found out."

Preston died earlier this year, aged 77. The paintings were put up for sale by her family.

Preston's sister, Angela Preston Alabaster, isn't impressed by the panels, telling CBS News, "They're not the sort of thing that you look at twice particularly. They're not attractive. If it had been Fra Angelico angels, that would have been a different kettle of fish!"

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