Hear a story about a very old painting. It was found hanging in someone's house, and it looked like it was a very old, valuable painting. But is it?


PAUL MCCARTHY: Sandro Botticelli is one of the most celebrated artists of the Renaissance.
His 500 year old works sell for millions if you can find one. That one could turn up in Adelaide would be a dream come true.

JANE MESSENGER (CURATOR, ART GALLERY OF SA): It would be extremely exciting if it did actually turn out to be a Botticelli or even a School of Botticelli. There aren't any Botticelli paintings in our state collection in Australia.

PAUL MCCARTHY: All clues pointed to that becoming a reality when local art experts were called upon to inspect this canvass depicting the Angel of the Annunciation, a popular subject at the time of Botticelli.
The painting had been hanging in an Adelaide home for the past 70 years, its origin a mystery, except for the fact it had been bought somewhere overseas.
Last year the owners asked forensic art expert, Chris Payne, to check it out.

CHRIS PAYNE (ARTLAB CONSERVATOR): We got that kind of tingly feeling that "here is the real thing" and it certainly looked the part and we were quite thrilled to see it.

PAUL MCCARTHY: Adelaide-based art restorers Artlab set to work unraveling the mystery.

It used x-rays and a computer program to make a thorough inspection and found there was even more to the painting than first met the eye.

CHRIS PAYNE: So using the x-ray as a guide, we open up small holes in the paint surface here and here, and I think over here.

PAUL MCCARTHY: It confirmed it was 500 years old but instead of being a real Botticelli, it was a fire damaged section of a large altar piece that had been painted over.

GILLIAN LEAHY (ARTLAB CONSERVATOR): This is an image of the original preparatory drawing that the artist did before he painted the original painting. All of the little curls in his hair can be seen and you can see the collar has been completely changed.

PAUL MCCARTHY: Also revealed was a picture of God hidden for centuries under the layers of paint. It is suspected the original piece came from an Italian church but about 150 years ago it was altered with the intention of passing it off as a Botticelli.

CHRIS PAYNE: It was often a phrase used in novels and things, "She looked like a Botticelli angel" so Botticelli was just the flavour of the month, so to speak, and so the restorer created an image that looked much more like a Botticelli than the previous image had looked.

JANE MESSENGER: In many respects it is not surprising because the chances of actually having an original Botticelli in Australia were probably fairly slim in the first instance but I think that is what made it such an exciting discovery.

CHRIS PAYNE: Instead of a genuine Renaissance painting, we end up with a nineteenth century pastiche, so we were disappointed.

PAUL MCCARTHY: The identity of the original artist remains a mystery, and he probably is from a generation before the Renaissance. But is it still valuable?

CHRIS PAYNE: Not in dollar terms. Scholastically it is very interesting, but that doesn't sort of help dollar-wise.