Lost works were behind a door

Two lost paintings by Italian Renaissance master Fra Angelico have turned up in a modest house in central England. The works -- two panels each painted with the standing figure of a Dominican saint in tempera on a gold background -- are expected to fetch nearly $2 million at auction.

They were discovered behind a bedroom door in a terraced house in Oxford when art auctioneer Guy Schwinge was called in to carry out a valuation after the owner of the house, British librarian Jean Preston, died in July.

They were commissioned by Florentine ruler Cosimo de’ Medici and his brother Lorenzo, major Renaissance art patrons, in the late 1430s for the high altar at the Church and Convent of San Marco in Florence, where Fra Angelico, a Dominican monk, lived.

The main panel from the altarpiece remains at San Marco, but the frame was broken up 200 years ago as a result of Napoleon’s invasion of Italy.