Million-pound Van Dyck identified in UK museum's store room

A painting by the 17th-century English court artist Sir Anthony Van Dyck has been identified as an original after lying hidden in a store roem in a museum in north-east England for decades. It's a rare event.

The art work, which was listed as a copy and covered with years of dirt, was photographed for an online musuem project called YourPaintings, whose aim is to catalogue every single one of Britain's oil paintings in public ownership.

The site has a target of listing a total of 210,000 works over 10 years.

The portrait of Olivia Boteler Porter, lady-in-waiting to Henrietta Maria, the wife of English King Charles I, was kept in the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle in County Durham.

Olivia was the wife of Flemish-born Van Dyck's best friend in England Endymion Porter.

Art historian, Bendor Grosvenor, spotted the picture online and Van Dyck experts confirmed his belief that it was actually an original.

Art experts say that it could be valued at up to one million pounds (1.15 million euros).