Long-lost Caravaggio painting found in attic 'worth €120 million'

This grisly oil-painting is thought to be worth around €120 million (around £95 million), and was only found two years ago because some home owners went to check a leak in their roof.

Now believed by the Eric Turquin art expert agency to be the work of the Italian painter Caravaggio, it depicts the biblical heroine Judith beheading an Assyrian general.

Eric Turquin did however tell a press conference there "will never be a consensus" about the name of the artist.

Judith Beheading Holofernes

Named Judith Beheading Holofernes, the work isn't the first depiction of this scene attributed to Caravaggio. Another version hangs in a museum in Rome.

The newly discovered painting is thought to have been painted in Rome in 1604-1605 and is in exceptionally good conditions, Eric Turquin said.

This despite it having been forgotten in the attic in southern France for probably more than 150 years.

The owners of the painting had no idea they had it until they went to the top of the house to check a leak in the roof, Turquin said.

"They had to go through the attic and break a door which they had never opened .. They broke the door and behind it was that picture. It's really incredible," he said.

French authorities have put a bar on it leaving France, describing it in a decree as a painting of "great artistic value, that could be identified as a lost painting by Caravaggio".