Jan

2012

12:10pm, EST

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

Dr. Christopher Brown, the Director of the Ashmolean Museum, adjusts the painting "Young Woman Seated at a Virginal" by Vermeer, in the Ashmolean Museum on Jan. 23, 2012 in Oxford, England. The painting, which dates from around 1670, is on loan from a private collection in America and will go on display in the Ashmolean's Dutch art galley until September 2012.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, is this Vermeer the fairest of them all?

Experts believe that this painting is an authentic Vermeer. It is also the only one in a private collection. Sotheby's spent ten years analyzing the painting over concerns that it was a fake, before finally auctioning it off in 2004 for $30million. There is a larger, more complicated version on view at the National Gallery in London. The smaller version was recentlly on view in Norfolk, Va. If it is a real Vermeer, it would be number 36 of only 35 known to exist.

More about the Museum of Art and Archeology on their website, The Ashmolean Musuem.