The panels were offered in London with basically the same cataloguing as they carried when they were offered in Melbourne in the Hawthorn East rooms of Mr Christopher Bragg in Melbourne on March 23.
They were offered with a full provenance and cataloguing that suggested solid scholarly analysis.
The estimate of $15,000 (on top of which a 14.6 per cent premium was payable) was doubled as a London dealer reportedly outbid an agent for another similar buyer in the room.
The condition of the pieces appeared far from fine but evidently this, the result of their travels in a container from South Africa 12 years ago when the German family owning them moved to Australia, is apparently superficial.
Mr Bragg said that he had felt confident about the attributions partly because the Quattrocento was a period he became closely acquainted with when he worked at Alan Jacobs Gallery in London in the 1970s.
He said after the sale, however, that he was always anxious for the client that a work fetch its full value in the room.
He had approached the major overseas art auction houses for interest in the works but had not had a reply from one and had been told by another that the works were not of interest.
The big auction houses like to cherry-pick especially in the Old Master market where attributions even of the most renowned scholars can vary a lot.
But when finally offered at Christie's they were given a £60,000 to £80,000 estimate which was more than doubled.
The name of the great Max Friedlander was invoked on both occasions to support the attribution.
The works were catalogued by Christie's as Netherlandish School, circa 1500.
"Four wings from an altarpiece: Saint James Preaching; Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos; Saints Bavo and John the Evangelist; and Saint Andrew."
They were an "impressive and skillfully rendered set of panels likely to have originally been part of a complex polyptych altarpiece, similar in size to the renowned Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eyck brothers.
"Whilst they are not recorded in the encyclopaedic volumes of Friedländer's Early Netherlandish Paintings, they can be associated with a number of works on the basis of stylistic comparison," the footnote cataloguer for both saleroom appearances said.
The subject of the panels, apart from the basic identification of the saints, may require further definition which is the a problem with Old Master paintings.
Opportunities for arbitrageurs to turn canvas to cash lately have required a miracle and on this occasion perhaps the miracle of the loaves and fishes would have fitted admirably.
Who made the saleroom's latest great catch is a mystery confounded by the catalogue note that VAT was payable on the full hammer price and the premium.
This suggests a consignor in Australia and the catalogue also described the work as having as its provenance "a private Australian collection" but not necessarily directly to the saleroom .
Mr Bragg said he was totally unaware that the work had returned to the market in London. The price was also a great surprise.
But the price had also surprised when it was offered in Hawthorn East especially in view of its religious content – not popular in a secular age.
Another painting offered in the same sale from the same collection on March 23 surprisingly failed to sell despite its more riotous subject matter.
What was possibly the most louche Old Master painting to turn up in Australia since Godfried Schalcken's A Scene in a Brothel in 1977 was reoffered later and sold for $16,000 plus premium to a New York dealer.
The painting shows drunken peasants with roaming hands sitting next to a seemingly also very merry young woman.
Yet as well as tavern scenes, Australia has also turned up a major religious Old Master or two.
In 1973 in London a panel from an altarpiece by the Adam Elsheimer, a German artist of the same vintage as these paintings, made over £100,000 at a Christie's sale in London after being bought in Sydney for $400.
