This forgotten statue was used as a door stop in a barn in Scotland. It turned out to be a masterpiece worth millions

Around 1930, a Scottish council bought a marble bust for £5. Although the 18th century work of art was created by the famous French sculptor Edmé Bouchardonits importance was forgotten: in 1998 the bust was used as a door stop in a barn.

Now the piece, known as the Bouchardon Bust, could sell for £2.5 million (almost $3.2 million). After years of bureaucratic debate, local officials hope to sell it to a private buyer. The proceeds would go to Invergordon, the small town in the north of Scotland that bought it.

Bouchardon is considered a precursor of Neoclassicismthe late 18th century style inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art. He worked as an artist at the court of the French king Louis XVand his best-known works include the Fountain of the Four Seasons (1745) and Cupid cuts his bow from Hercules’ club (1750).

But several decades earlier, Bouchardon created a bust of John Gordon, an 18th-century local landowner who was “believed to be the founder of the town of Invergordon,” according to one statement of the Highland Council, of the region comprising Invergordon.

Gordon came from a family of Scottish landowners and was traveling in Europe as a young man when he met Bouchardon in Rome, where the artist created the marble sculpture in 1728. BBC News“Steven McKenzie. The bust remained in the Gordon family’s Invergordon Castle for many years.

In about 1930, Invergordon City Council purchased the bust at auction. Officials hoped to put it on display at City Hall. But in the decades that followed, it seems to have been misplaced.

Maxine Smith was an Invergordon councilor in the late 1990s when she first saw Bouchardon’s bust while looking for old provost robes and necklaces in a storage shed. She noticed the white artwork holding open an interior door, but she focused on the ceremonial robes and paintings nearby.

“The pictures looked quite expensive, and I ignored this thing on the floor,” she said BBC news‘ McKenzie and Iain MacInnes last year. “A few people joked, ‘You should have taken it home when you saw it.'”

Fortunately, someone else recognized the bust’s value shortly afterwards. Since the artwork was rediscovered it has been in the hands of the Highland Council. Local officials chose not to display it themselves due to its value, although they have loaned it to the community Louvre in Paris in 2016 and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2017.

The bust recently attracted the attention of a mysterious buyer, who contacted the auction house Sotheby’s to pass on their offer. The unknown person also offered to commission a museum-quality replica of the bust to be displayed in Invergordon.

The sale has been the subject of lengthy discussions, making progress difficult. A Highland Council committee voted in favor of selling the bust earlier this year. According to CNN‘s Amarachi Orie, the Tain Sheriff Court of the Scottish Highlands, approved the sale last week.

As councilor Lyndsey Johnston says in the statement, the proceeds will be an investment in Invergordon. “The community and visitors will be able to enjoy the replica bust and the history behind the original for years to come,” she added.