ART

Edward Lubin, a New York art dealer, paid $425,000 for an 11th-Century mosaic that went unrecognized for a century in a Welsh village church and almost got painted over, said a spokeswoman for Sotheby’s auctioneers. The mosaic, an oval fragment depicting a saint’s head, is part of a larger work called “The Last Judgment” that was completed by its unknown artist about 1070 for the Torcello Cathedral outside Venice, Italy. A Welsh archeologist and engineer included the mosaic in St. Anne’s Church in Talygarn when it was built in 1887. The mosaic’s value was discovered by the village’s new priest last year.