Kicker: Valuable clean-up

MARY REICHARD, HOST: An elderly woman just outside of Paris recently decided to sell her home. 

She figured most of her boxed up knicknacks would wind up at the dump. But she thought some of her older furniture might just have a some value. 

So she asked someone at a local auction house to take a look. That’s when Philomène Wolf showed up. 

As Wolf walked through the house, something other than furniture caught her eye. It was hanging on the kitchen wall above a hotplate: an 8 x 11 inch weathered painting of Jesus with people gathered around him. 

The elderly woman couldn’t remember how long it she’d had it or where it came from. But this wasn’t just any old painting. 

It’s a rare rare 13th-century masterpiece from the hand of Italian artist Cimabue, titled “Christ Mocked.”  

Experts confirmed its authenticity with infrared lights. They say when the pre-renaissance painting sells at auction next month,  it could fetch more than $6 million.

BASHAM: This is the kind of story that makes clearing out the house terrifying.

REICHARD: Don’t I know it!  It’s The World and Everything in It.

(Photo/Michel Euler, AP)

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