Two Van Goghs Re-discovered

-- in the same painting!

"Re-attributed" Van Gogh painting: Still Life with Meadow Flowers and Roses, 1886, oil on canvas, about 39 x 31 1/2 inches (Kröller-Müller Museum ).

On January 22, 1885, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that he was painting "a big thing with two naked torsos, two wrestlers." That painting was presumed to be lost until researchers at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland, using a new technique, the impressive-sounding Macro Scanning X-ray Fluorescence Spectometry, were able to detect it under a still life in their collection -- a painting they “deattributed” to Van Gogh in 2003 but which now is proven to be authentic.

The Independent reports that  

Doubts about the still life were due partly to the canvas’s unusual size, at 100 x 80 cm. Van Gogh’s Parisian flower still lifes are generally smaller. Historians have now realised that the size of the canvas was a standard format for figure paintings at the Antwerp academy.

Macro Scanning X-ray Fluorescence Spectometry photograph showing Van Gogh's wrestlers.