A former owner of a painting has lost a High Court battle in a dispute over whether it was by the hand of the Italian artist Caravaggio.
Lancelot William Thwaytes, whose family acquired the work known as The Cardsharps in 1962, sued auction house Sotheby's alleging he was given negligent advice.
Mr Thwaytes, who inherited the painting from his art collector cousin, sold it through Sotheby's for a hammer price of £42,000 in December 2006 after it was catalogued as the work of a "follower" of Caravaggio.
The painting was bought by Mrs Orietta Adam, the partner of renowned scholar Sir Denis Mahon.
On 10 November, 2007 - at his 97th birthday party - Sir Denis declared his belief that the old master had created the work himself in about 1595 and valued it at £10m.
Following his death, it went on loan to the Museum of the Order of St John at Clerkenwell, London, and is currently insured for £10m.
The painting shows a young, privileged man falling victim to a pair of cheats during a game of cards
Lawyers for Mr Thwaytes argued at a hearing last October that Mr Thwaytes had sought Sotheby's full advice and wanted "certainty" about the nature of the painting before putting it up for sale, but the advice he was given was "negligent".
They accused Sotheby's of not consulting enough top experts or sufficiently testing the painting before the sale.
But Mrs Justice Rose, sitting in London, ruled there had been no negligence by Sotheby's, which disputed the claim that the work was by Caravaggio.
The judge ruled Sotheby's experts had reasonably come to the view that the quality of the painting "was not sufficiently high to indicate that it might be by Caravaggio".
Sotheby's countered that many leading art specialists did not believe the work was by the Milan-born artist and it would never have sold for the millions suggested by those supporting Mr Thwaytes.
It was also the unanimous opinion of specialists in the auction house's own old masters painting (OMP) department that it was an anonymous copy of Caravaggio's Cardsharps displayed in the Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, which was universally acknowledged to be by the old master.
Today the judge ruled the auction house had been entitled to rely on "the connoisseurship and expertise of their specialists in the OMP department in assessing the quality of the painting."
The judge said they were highly qualified and examined the painting thoroughly.
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