A Van Dyck is discovered stored in an English museum

A passionate British art has identified a valuable online see Van Dyck was stored for years in an English museum because they thought it was a copy.

The art historian Bendor Grosvenor authorship certified female portrait, 72 by 61 inches, after seeing it on the website "Your paintings" enabled by public broadcaster BBC to catalog all the oils in the hands of public institutions in the UK.

A Grosvenor not had no doubt that the portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter, bridesmaid Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I, was the Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck, who worked at the court of the monarch.

The work, in the 1630s, remained for years forgotten and dusty Bowes Museum in County Durham English because it was believed to be a copy.

Grosvenor has valued the portrait, which will continue in public hands, around one million pounds (1.1 million euros or 1.5 million), compared to the four or five thousand pounds (four thousand to five thousand 588 euros or 735 995 five thousand to seven thousand 493 U.S. dollars) worth is estimated as the alleged copy.

The picture identification process detailed in the BBC program "Culture Show", which will air today and the Bowes Museum director, Adrian Jenkins, thanks Grosvenor to have increased the pedigree of his collection.