After disappearing for more than a century, two altarpiece paintings that once belonged to a church in Seville have been recovered and returned by the art crime unit of Spanish police.
In September 2025, Spanish police were alerted by the Archdiocese of Seville to two paintings listed in an auction house catalog that were thought to have once belonged to the church of the Hospital of the Venerable Priests, a chapel in the city’s historic center. Following investigations by the Spanish Historical Heritage Brigade, it was determined that the oval paintings were indeed by Lucas Valdés, the Baroque painter who had provided altarpiece works for the church in the last years of the 17th century.
On May 20, the pine board oil paintings were handed back to the Hospital of the Venerable Priests in a ceremony attended by senior figures from the Archdiocese of Seville and Historical Heritage Brigade staff.
The paintings on display during the handover ceremony. Photo: courtesy Archdiocese of Seville.
The two paintings depict episodes from the Old Testament: Samson removing a honeycomb from the mouth of a lion he had previously killed; and David receiving sacred loaves from Ahimelech, a priest in Nob, while a fugitive. Measuring 23-by-24 inches, they were part of the main altarpiece created by Francisco de Barahona, a Seville-based sculptor and architect active at the turn of the 18th century.
Church of the Hospital of the Venerable Priests in Seville. Photo: Getty Images.
The works remained in place until 1889, when they were moved to a room adjoining the main church during renovations on the altarpiece. As documented by Diego Angulo Íñiguez, a Baroque specialist and one-time director of Madrid’s Prado Museum, the paintings were in the sacristy in the early 1920s. They disappeared after being shown in 1929 at the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville, a major fair celebrating economic and cultural ties between Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, apparently winding up in private hands.
Once the paintings were authenticated, they were seized by the Spanish police just days before they were due to be auctioned, according to the authorities. Through a mediation process, the consignors of the works were advised to return the works to the rightful owners, the police said.
“The Lucas Valdés works have been returned thanks to the fruitful efforts of the Archdiocese, their last owners, and the police,” Archdiocese of Seville noted in a statement. “They can once again be contemplated by the faithful and visitors to Seville.”