He Wouldn't Be Starving Anymore

A recently discovered painting by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens has sold for more than $76 million -- the third highest price ever paid for a painting, Sotheby's auction house said.

"The Massacre of the Innocents," painted between 1609 and 1611, was only positively identified a few weeks ago when the owner took it to Sotheby's for examination.

It was bought on Wednesday by an unidentified private collector at Sotheby's in London for $76.2 million, smashing the expected price of $9 million, said Alexander Bell, the head of Sotheby's Old Master paintings department.

He said it was the most expensive painting ever sold at an auction in London. The record was previously held by Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers," which sold in 1987 for $35 million, Bell said.

Overall, it was the third most expensive painting ever sold at auction, behind Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet", sold by Christie's in New York for $82.5 million in 1990, and Pierre Auguste Renoir's "Au Moulin de la Galette", sold by Sotheby's in New York for $78 million the same year, said Matthew Weigman, a Sotheby's spokesman.

Bell said the sale price had been underestimated because it was the greatest painting from that era that has been sold for years.

"This is the most expensive Old Master painting ever sold, by far. It's more than doubled the previous price," Bell said. "This is a truly great picture, the likes of which we haven't seen on the market in a generation."

The Old Masters include the 17th century Dutch painters Jan van Eyck, Rubens and Rembrandt.

Weigman said the bidding opened at $4.6 million, and went on for 10 minutes, much longer than normal.

He said there were still five bidders active above $39 million. By the time the total had reached $62 million, he said, there were still three bidders:

The winner, London art dealer Sam Fogg on behalf of a private owner who he declined to name; a dealer bidding for an unidentified museum; and a Sotheby's representative bidding for another unidentified client over the telephone.

For more than 200 years, the painting's owners believed it to be the work of artist Jan van den Hoecke. But Sotheby's senior Old Masters painting specialist, George Gordon, found it to be a Rubens.

"The chance to see this work is extremely exciting for collectors and scholars alike," Gordon said. "For such a work of genius by such a great painter to languish under a false attribution to a minor artist for so long is surely an injustice, but in the end quality will out."

The painting depicts the moment when King Herod ordered the slaughter of all newborn boys to get rid of the Messiah.

It shows a gruesome, action-filled scene in which soldiers begin to slaughter a group of women and children. Babies' bodies litter the ground, one soldier holds an old woman by the throat as he prepares to run a sword through her torso, and blood runs beneath the figures' feet.

Gordon said the painting had been owned by the same family since 1920. They had bought it from a dealer who had acquired it from the royal family of Liechtenstein, which had owned it since around 1700.

It was identified as an early Rubens when the Liechtenstein family bought it, but was later misidentified by their curators and its original attribution forgotten.

"The painting had been lost for hundreds of years," said Weigman. "It really is the most remarkable painting, and the interest in it has grown and grown."

Rubens, a fine colorist who lived between 1577 and 1640, painted many portraits of nobles and prominent public figures in his own country and in Spain, France, and England. His masterpiece, "Descent from the Cross" is located in Antwerp cathedral, and his "War and Peace" painting can be seen in Britain's National Gallery.