Både arkeologien og kunsthistorien kaster stadig opp nye skatter begravd i fortiden. Det spesielle med kunst er at det ofte er bilder som henger rett foran øynene på folk, men de ser ikke hva det er. Slik var det med dette bildet av Kristus. Det henger i Holy Trinity Church i Bradford on Avon. Men det var ikke det kunsthistorikeren kom for å se, det var et annet bilde som en kunstinteressert var overbevist om var en ekte Van Dyke.

The trail began when Simon Watney, a conservation adviser to the Church Monuments Society, visited Holy Trinity in 2006. Mr Watney is an expert in early religious statuary but it was an oil painting that caught his eye.

Mr Watney said: «I couldn’t get a good look at it because the north aisle was full of a display of tapestries by the local sewing club, but I recognised it as a composition by Van Dyke.» He persuaded Kiffy Stainer-Hutchins, an art restorer and a leading authority on Van Dyke, to travel from her home in Holkham, Norfolk, to inspect the picture with him. «It was immediately clear the Van Dyke was an 18th-century copy but then I saw this little portrait of Christ in a horrible almost plastic-looking frame,» he said. «I was amazed by the quality and I said straight away, ‘This is a Quentin Metsys.’» Examination of the painting, which measures 30cm by 38cm (12in by 15in) and is now believed to date from around 1505, revealed it had been painted on two horizontal boards, an extremely unusual arrangement. It was then that Ms Stainer-Hutchins recalled having once seen a Metsys portrait of the Virgin Mary that was also painted on two boards.

«It was one of those unreal moments,» she said. «It was obviously an exquisite Netherlandish painting from the hand of a master of the highest quality, but it took well over a year to confirm what we already knew.» Over the centuries both pictures had been messed around with. The Virgin, now in the Fitzwilliam collection of Lady Juliet Tadgell, had been heavily and rather poorly restored. It had been cut down to a more regular shape and the boards had been chamfered to make it appear to be a stand-alone picture.

Slik fører oppdagelsen av et mesterverk til at historien rulles opp: bildet ble saget i to av en grådig kunsthandler som trodde han kunne tjene mer på to enn ett bilde.

Painting in a damp church is the missing half of a masterpiece