BERLIN -- A Berlin student who bought a second-hand sofa bed at a flea market learned she had been sitting on a small fortune when she found a baroque painting hidden inside the couch.
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A German student who bought a battered fold-up sofa at a flea market has sold a 17th century Italian painting she discovered tucked inside it for 19,600 euros (US$28,200). [Agencies]
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The artwork fetched 19,600 euros ($28,200) in Hamburg after the student discovered it stashed between the folding sections of the couch she had paid 150 euros for last year, the auctioneers said on Tuesday.
"She used the sofa bed for a while before realizing the painting was in there," said Michaela Derra, spokeswoman for the auction house Ketterer Kunst, adding she did not know how the oil painting had wound up inside the sofa.
The student got about 16,000 euros from the sale.
Experts believe the work, entitled "Preparations for the flight to Egypt," was painted between 1605 and 1610 by an unknown artist with ties to Venetian painter Carlo Saraceni.