Two unknown paintings by Rembrandt have been discovered in a family’s private collection.
The pictures are “exceptionally rare” and are expected to fetch more than £13 million at auction.
The portraits of are signed by the Dutch master and dated 1635.
The pictures are of Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and his wife Jaapgen Carels.
The couple bought a garden next to Rembrandt’s mother in Leiden that year.
In June 1824 the paintings were put up for sale with Christie’s, but they stayed in Britain in the same family’s private collection.
They have been “hidden” behind closed doors ever since.
They came to light during a “routine valuation” to look at the contents of a house.
The current owners have not been named.
Henry Pettifer, international deputy chair of Old Master paintings at Christie’s, said:
“The pictures were at once of terrific interest.
‘What’s extraordinary is that the paintings were completely unknown.
“They had never appeared in any of the Rembrandt literature of the 19th or 20h century, so they were completely unknown.
“The small, very intimate, and very spontaneous nature of the paintings indicated a close relationship with the artist.”
The paintings are set to go on show in New York and Amsterdam next month, before returning to London for a pre-sale exhibition and the auction on July 6th.
