Recovered Rubens sketch goes for $1.5M at auction

LILLE, France - A lost sketch by Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens was sold at auction on Sunday for $1.46 million after being rediscovered in to an inheritance, French auctioneers said.

The work, which depicts Saint Margaret dressed in a red-and-white dress, holding a cross in her hand and crushing a dragon, dates from 1620, according to the Mercier auction house in Lille in northern France.

"This is the sketch that served as a model for one of the very large panels destined for the ceiling of the Jesuit Church in Antwerp," said auctioneer Patrick Deguines.