Overview

• The National Gallery in London purchased a Renaissance altarpiece, titled 'The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels,' for $20 million, funded by the American Friends of the National Gallery and brokered through Sotheby’s.
• The artist remains unidentified, with experts suggesting it may have been created by a French or Netherlandish painter between 1500 and 1510, using oak felled around 1483.
• The work features rare and striking iconography, including a crying dragon, an angel playing a Jew’s harp, and a bawdy depiction of a child, which are seldom seen in northern European art of the period.
• First documented at the Drongen priory in Ghent in 1602, the altarpiece later entered private collections, including the Lulworth Estate in Dorset, before its acquisition by the National Gallery.
• The painting will be displayed publicly for the first time in 60 years starting May 10 in the newly renovated Sainsbury Wing, part of the gallery's bicentenary celebrations.