ART

Sweden’s National Museum has discovered an original sketch by Renaissance master Raphael gathering dust in the museum’s archives, a spokesman said Thursday. The sketch for a section of the Italian’s 1508 Vatican fresco “The Lord Appears Before Noah” was believed to be worth up to $2.5 million but would never be put on the market, museum curator Per Bjurstrom said. The find was made by Austrian art historian and Raphael expert Sylvia Ferino Pagden when studying a collection of Raphael imitations which had been in the museum archives since the mid-18th Century, he said. The 12- by 16-inch sketch shows Noah kneeling before God as he is told of the impending flood.