The painting with three ears

Lesley Stevenson, a conservator at the National Galleries of Scotland, recently discovered a secret self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh on the back of one of his paintings ​​during a routine X-ray ahead of an exhibition.

👨‍🎨 More deets: The Dutch artist – whose work didn’t become famous until after his death – often reused canvases to save money, turning them over and then working on the other side.

• His self-portraits have been discovered on the backs of other paintings, especially those from between 1883 and 1885. 
• The one in this story, “Head of a Peasant Woman,” depicts a local woman from a small Dutch town where Van Gogh lived during that period.

🤔🖼 Not so fast… Though the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said the hidden painting was “almost certainly” drawn by the famed artist based on the X-ray, it hasn’t officially been confirmed yet. But that’ll be tricky, since it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t damage the painting underneath.

• Dozens of Van Gogh paintings have been bought and sold for tens of millions of dollars over the past few decades, led by “Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet” which sold for $83 million in 1990 (~$186 million adjusted for inflation).