The Gazette Druout floats a new theory of the Judith and Holofernes sale that puts the Met’s Keith Christensen, a strong supporter of the attribution to Caravaggio, in the driver’s seat of the sale. With the French unconvinced the work is by the Italian master and the Met having lost the loan of the Wildenstein’s Lute Player in 2013, Christensen has a new project coming to fruition that could benefit greatly from a high profile work.

Here’s the Gazette’s report:

According to our sources, this lucky collector seems to be J. Tomilson Hill, who has close links with not only the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he sits on the Board of Trustees […] Now it seems likely that this Judith beheading Holofernes could be presented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new European Painting galleries, due to open in a few months’ time. This Old Master “skylights” project is one of the spearheads of Keith Christiansen’s policy. […] In January, theGazette published an interview that took place in June 2017, when he told us he had never had any doubts as to the Caravaggio attribution. His desire to exhibit the painting at the Metropolitan Museum one day was an open secret. It just needed a collector who shared the same vision… Tom Hill