Family put $300m Michelangelo behind sofa

A FAMILY in New York may have had an unfinished €300 million (€216m) Michelangelo painting hanging on their living room wall for a year.

In their home outside of Buffalo in upstate New York, the Kober family once displayed an unfinished panel painting of a Pieta – or a scene of Mary holding Jesus after his crucifixion. But when the children knocked the artwork off its perch with an errant tennis ball in the mid-1970s, the family tucked it away behind a sofa.

There it remained for 27 years, until Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Martin Kober retired in 2003 and had some time on his hands. His father gave him a task: research the family lore that the painting was actually created by Michelangelo.