Italian artist Antonio Canova's lost masterpiece 'Maddalena Giacente' rediscovered

A long-lost sculpture of Mary Magdalene, one of the last completed by the great Italian artist Antonio Canova before his death in 1822, has been rediscovered. It can fetch up to $10 million when it heads to auction in July.

Described by auction house Christies' as the Italian neoclassical sculptor's "lost masterpiece," "Maddalena Giacente" (Recumbent Magdalene) was commissioned by the Earl of Liverpool, then British prime minister, and took three years to carve.

Depicting Mary Magdalene in a state of religious ecstasy, the sculpture was completed just before Canova's death in 1822.

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“It is a miracle that Antonio Canova’s exceptional, long-lost masterpiece has been found, 200 years after its completion,” said Dr Mario Guderzo, a leading Canova scholar and former director of the Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova.

“This work has been searched for by scholars for decades, so the discovery is of fundamental importance for the history of collecting and the history of art.”

Writing about the Recumbent Magdalene in 1819, Canova said: “I exhibited another model of a second Magdalene lying on the ground, and almost fainting from the excessive pain of her penitence, a subject that I like very much, and that has earned me a lot of indulgence, and very flattering praise.”

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The sculpture, currently on show at Christies' London, will go on tour to New York and Hong Kong.

Donald Johnson, Christie’s international head of sculpture, said the rediscovery was “a highlight within my 30-plus-year career in the field”.

He said: “This sculpture represents an extensively documented commission from a major figure in British history, the prime minister Lord Liverpool, whose purchase of the Magdalene is a testament to the love that British collectors had always show for the work of the great neo-classical sculptor Antonio Canova.”

"It was one of the highlights of the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester in 1857...it was sold with the contents of a house to a gentleman...there was a fire at the house. He had an auction of the contents, and by the time that auction happened in 1938, the identity was lost and she was just referred to as a classical figure."

(With inputs from agencies)