A New York college professor sparked a decades-old art mystery — just by going to church.
Tom Ruggio said he found a 17th-century painting long thought to be missing by looking up as he sat in the back of Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in New Rochelle.
“One day the lights were on a little brighter and I saw that painting and I was shocked,” the art-history professor told News 12 Westchester. “I immediately knew it was 17th Century Italian.”
He now says he and other experts determined that the Baroque oil painting was by Italian artist Cesare Dandini, depicting babies Jesus and St. John the Baptist with Jesus’ parents Mary and Joseph.
Art historians had considered the allegedly centuries-old work missing — as it unwittingly sat on the wall of the local church since the 1960s, reports said.
“This painting was thought to be lost for decades, so it was hiding in plain sight essentially in New Rochelle,” Ruggio told WABC 7.
The church is lending the painting out to Iona College for a three-month display in its library, but no one seems to be entirely sure how Holy Family got its hands on the Dandini.
Monsignor Dennis Keane said a former head of the church bought the painting in a London gallery in the 1960s.
“He purchased two of these paintings in a gallery, but we don’t know the name of the gallery,” Keane told WABC.
It also isn’t entirely clear what the painting would fetch in terms of a price tag if it were put up for sale.