An Italian Baroque painting lost 300+ years ago, has turned up. “The picture, The Montalto Madonna, has been copied many times by artists in Rome, both in painted and engraved form. It was last mentioned officially in 1672 by the biographer Gian Pietro Bellori but thereafter vanished without trace and has been considered lost ever since. When a client took a small copper panel bearing the familiar composition of The Montalto Madonna into Sotheby’s head office, the instinctive reaction was that it was not the real thing – or rather that it could not possibly be the genuine article after a lapse of more than three centuries. However…”