Irish connection in French old master discovery

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---------- By Paddy Agnew Italy: Four previously unknown paintings by
the 16th-century French maestro, Nicolas Poussin, are to go on
exhibition in Rome next weekend, according to the Italian arts
magazine, Quadri e Sculture.

The key figure in what appears to be one of the most significant art
finds of the last decade is the art historian, Sir Denis Mahon, who
comes from a well-known Co Galway banking family and whose parents
were Irish. Sir Denis came across perhaps the most important of the
paintings, The Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem, at a Sotheby's auction
in London in 1995.

Sir Denis was involved in the verification process that led to the
discovery in Dublin of the Caravaggio painting, The Capture of Christ,
now on display at the National Gallery.

Like the Dublin Caravaggio, the Poussin painting had been wrongly
titled and attributed, in this case to an Italian painter, Pietro
Testa, and named The Sack of Carthage.

When it was originally presented at Sotheby's, it was felt that The
Sack of Carthage might fetch between £16,000 and £17,000. By the time
Sir Denis had verified its authenticity, its value had risen so much
that its current owner, the art house Hazlett, Gooden and Fox, is
reported to have recently refused £4.8 million for it.

The Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem and three other previously unknown
Poussin paintings also discovered by Sir Denis, Narcissus, The Fall of
the Giants and Apollo and Marsius, were all painted in Rome between
1625 and 1627.

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