"The art historians' hearts sank as soon as they got a proper look at the Van Dyke on the wall of a Wiltshire church. The painting they had travelled hundreds of miles to see was clearly an 18th-century copy.

"Then a much smaller, darker picture caught their eye.

"Holy Trinity, the parish church of Bradford-on-Avon, is now in line for a windfall of hundreds of thousands of pounds after the portrait of Christ was identified as a previously unknown masterpiece by the greatest early 16th-century Flemish artist, Quentin Metsys.

"Metsys's best-known work, The Ugly Duchess, is regularly voted the most popular picture in the National Gallery, but he also produced a series of religious paintings, of which the Bradford Christ has been identified as one of the earliest and finest."

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