There are always amazing discoveries and new attributions.

An insurance inventory occasion unearthed a possible masterpiece in a Toulouse household.

The small painting on an oak panel, depicting a kneeling angel waving an incense burner in the style of the early Renaissance, dressed in a yellow tunic with a red drape, had belonged to a family collection for decades.

Despite several initiatives, it was never possible to determine his authorship.

Only when the Artpaugée auction house in Toulouse, which was entrusted with a possible auction, consulted the Turquin cabinet of experts in Paris for the investigation, was a trace found that leads back to southern Germany over several centuries.

A comparable oak panel

The painting has been attributed to the painter Bernhard Strigel (1460 to 1528).

He painted an altarpiece around 1520, probably for the Frauenkirche in his home town of Memmingen, to which the panel could belong.

In the course of the Reformation, the altarpiece could have been dismantled and the associated parts of the painting scattered.

Last week, the approximately 48 by 60 centimeter panel came up for auction at Artpaugée.

Initially, seven bidders on telephones competed for the “angel in a yellow tunic waving incense”.

After two million euros had been exceeded, the bid was negotiated in a tough duel between two bidders until the hammer fell at the record price of 2.8 million euros (estimate 600,000/800,000).

The name of the buyer was not mentioned, but it is said to be a museum.

It is very likely that the Louvre Abu Dhabi is behind the purchase.

In 2008, an oak panel of comparable size and style with a kneeling angel waving incense, albeit in a red robe, was auctioned at the Drouot for 900,000 euros.

A year later it was sold to the Louvre Abu Dhabi for an undisclosed sum.

According to the latest research, both panels belonged to the same altarpiece by Strigel.

According to auction registers, they were torn apart at a Paris auction in 1816 – then attributed to Albrecht Dürer.

Now they could be reunited in the desert state of Abu Dhabi.

With such attributions, however, numerous questions remain unanswered, even when hammer prices in the millions are offered.