Is it a bald elderly man with a big bushy beard and a wine-addled stare? Or a friendly young woman with flowing locks and a crown of braids?<\/p>\n
To Belgian art dealer Klaas Muller, an answer to that question mattered less than the fact that this particular take on the duck-rabbit optical illusion was painted by one Peter Paul Rubens.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, the Brussels-based former gallerist managed to effectively acquire not just one but two studies of heads by the Flemish baroque master in one painting, paying the \u201creasonable price\u201d of less than \u20ac100,000 at an online auction.<\/p>\n
The auctioneer, which Muller would identify only as a \u201clesser-known auction house in northern Europe\u201d for fear of encouraging too much future competition, had advertised the work as an undated study on paper by an anonymous master of the \u201cFlemish school\u201d.<\/p>\n
The study of an old man was painted on a reused sheet of paper, and when turned over, the silhouette of a woman\u2019s head appears through the model\u2019s beard. Composite: Peter Paul Rubens\/Klaas Muller\/Brafa Art Fair<\/p>\n
In the recent past, studies by Rubens<\/a> have sold for between \u00a3500,000 and \u00a31m or more.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure it was a Rubens, I just knew it was very Rubens-esque, so it was still a gamble,\u201d said Muller, who describes himself as a passionate admirer of the 1577-born artist and diplomat. \u201cI have a library of books about him at home and look at them most evenings,\u201d he told the Guardian. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of an addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n He felt more confident when the painting was delivered to his home. \u201cIt was very dirty, but the varnish had protected the painting very well and I could see that it was of extremely high quality.\u201d<\/p>\n But it was not until after the picture was studied for several months last year by the art historian Ben van Beneden, a former director of the Rubens House, that Muller started to feel confident he had acquired a genuine old master.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s very likely,\u201d said van Beneden. \u201cYou have to be cautious because you are dealing with a painting that wasn\u2019t made for the market but as a working material. But the craftsmanship is outstanding \u2013 it has a very lifelike quality.\u201d<\/p>\n The old man figure in the study appears in several of Rubens\u2019 better-known paintings. \u201cHe is omnipresent and versatile,\u201d wrote the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, which broke the news of the painting\u2019s discovery this week.<\/p>\n In The Raising of the Cross, a raised altarpiece in Antwerp Cathedral, the old man is depicted as Saint Amandus. In The Adoration of the Magi<\/a>, which hangs in the Prado museum in Madrid, he is a red-cloaked King Melchior. In The Tribute Money<\/a>, at the Legion of Honour museum in San Francisco, he is the Pharisee peeking out from behind Jesus.<\/p>\n The Adoration of the Magi, Peter Paul Rubens, 1609 and 1628-29, features the same model as a red-cloaked Melchoir. Photograph: Museo del Prado<\/p>\n Inspired by Italian painters, Rubens collated a series of different physiognomies he could use for larger paintings.He is known to have created a prototype study of the old man\u2019s head that has since been lost. \u201cMuller may indeed have found the prototype,\u201d van Beneden said.<\/p>\n