"This discovery is a first for Belgium," said a spokesman for the Royal Institute for Artistic Heritage in Brussels. "The piece was for a long time hidden away in the stores, but is now fully restored to its original state". Neither the Institute nor the museum would say, however, what the exact circumstances of the find were. That will be revealed, together with further details about the work, when the painting is put on display on 1 September.

Murillo (1618-1682) was born in Seville, the youngest of 14 children, and became known for his religious paintings which belong to the baroque tradition, while his more secular portrayals of ordinary people tend more towards the realism that was to come along much later. He produced numerous other paintings of the Virgin, some of which hang in the Pitti Palace in Florence, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The Madonna shown here is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.