A painting found after more than 150 years of lying forgotten in an attic has been attributed to the Italian baroque master Caravaggio.
'Judith Beheading Holofernes' could be worth nearly £100 million, according to French experts.
The painting shows Judith, a widow who is heroine of the apocryphal Book of Judith. The book has been controversial throughout the ages because she uses her beauty and charm to seduce the wicked King Nebuchadnezzar's general, Holofernes, before beheading him with a sword.
The 144cm x 175cm painting was found by the owners of a house near Toulouse when they broke down a door to investigate a leak, and found an area under the rafters they had not known existed. Although parts of the painting were damp because of the leak, it was undamaged.
It is thought to have been painted in Rome in the early years of the 17th century Caravaggio, whose real name was Michelangelo Merisi.
"A painter is like us he has tics, and you have all the tics of Caravaggio in this. Not all of them, but many of them – enough to be sure that this is the hand, this is the writing of this great artist," the painting expert Eric Turquin told Reuters TV.
"It has the light, the energy, typical of Caravaggio, without mistakes, done with a sure hand and a pictorial style that makes it authentic."
The owners of the painting had no idea they had it, he added. He said he had kept it out of the public eye for two years while he studied and cleaned it.
"They had to go through the attic and break a door which they had never opened... They broke the door and behind it was that picture. It's really incredible."
The French Culture Ministry believes it to be of "great artistic value" and has banned its export from France for 30 months. This will allow French galleries to study and buy it if they wish.
Nicola Spinoza, former director of the Naples museum, told Agence France Press: "One has to recognise the canvas in question as a true original of the Lombard master, almost certainly identifiable, even if we do not have any tangible or irrefutable proof."
However the French newspaper Le Quotidien de l'Art suggested it might not be by Caravaggio. Art expert Mina Gregori told the paper that it was not an original although she recognised the "undeniable quality of the work".
