For 70 years a Parisian apartment had been left uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint of what was inside. Behind the door, under a thick layer of dust, lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects, including a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. The woman who owned the apartment had left for the south of France before World War II and had never returned. When she recently passed away at the age of 91, experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions. One expert said that entering the cobweb-filled apartment was like stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900. Walking under the high wooden ceilings, past an old wood stove and stone sink in the kitchen, he spotted a stuffed ostrich and a Mickey Mouse toy dating back to before the war. He said his heart skipped a beat when he caught sight of a stunning painting of a woman in a pink muslin evening dress. The painting was by Boldini and the subject was a beautiful French woman who turned out to be the artist's former muse and whose granddaughter it was who had left the apartment uninhabited for more than half a century. He finally found a reference to the work in a book by the artist's widow, which said it was painted in 1898 when Miss de Florian was 24. The starting price for the painting was €300,000 ($350,412) but it rocketed as 10 bidders battled for the historic work. It finally went under the hammer for €2.1 million ($2.4 million), a world record for the artist.
