A retired French doctor was the unknowing owner of a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. Last March, he brought the inherited piece into a Parisian auction house who consulted experts, coming to the conclusion that it was an exciting new discovery by the master himself. The work is valued at about $16 million and will be auctioned in June at Tajan.

From Tajan:

Tajan, the well-known French auction house, assisted by the Old Master drawings expert Patrick de Bayser, has the great honor to announce the extraordinary discovery, the first in over fifteen years, of an exceptional work by the Italian Master Leonardo da Vinci. In the Codex Atlanticus, a list compiled by Leonardo, eight Saint Sebastians are mentioned. We currently believe that our drawing representing “The Martyred Saint Sebastian” belongs to this illustrious group.

Over the past few months, we have had the pleasure to consult with a world-renowned expert on Leonardo drawings, Dr. Carmen C. Bambach, who is a Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In her landmark 2003 exhibition catalogue, Dr. Bambach reconstructed how the Saint Sebastians listed in the Codex Atlanticus relate to an unexecuted or lost votive painting of the martyred saint by Leonardo.

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “In the scholarly opinion of Carmen C. Bambach, our expert on the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, this is an exciting new discovery of an authentic double-sided sheet by the master (1452-1519), representing on the recto the full figure of the martyred Saint Sebastian tied to a tree in a landscape, and on the verso, notes and diagrams about light and shadow, which relate to Leonardo’s study of optics. Dr. Bambach published the related drawings of Saint Sebastian in Hamburg and Bayonne in the 2003 catalogue accompanying her exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman at The Met. In a soon-to-be-published article, Dr. Bambach will discuss the complex scientific material, related works of art, and larger implications of this discovery, along with new research.“