GUEST: We have no idea who it is and my husband said just wrap it up carefully, because the back is falling apart. I said I would take very good care of it, so I brought it down, not knowing a thing about it and so...
APPRAISER: Well, it's interesting, the painting. The artist is a fellow by the name of Ignacio León y Escosura-- he's a Spanish artist. He was born around 1840 and lived to about 1900. But this guy, in this painting, pulls out all the stops. He's really showing off what he can do with paint. Hard to even believe it's paint. From this beautiful silk dress, here, to all the little jewels, and the jewel-box and the mirror, and jewels in her headdress. And then he even goes on further and puts on an elaborately colored Persian carpet on there. Another thing he's done is he's done it on wood, on a panel, rather than on canvas. Now, the wood-- hard surfaces like panels and copper-- allow the paint to set up and be more jewel-like. The canvases, they sort of absorb into, and you get a duller finish. This... he chooses panels to give you this almost jewel-like finish here. This is the kind of painting, also, that would be very popular in New Orleans. New Orleans, as a town, loves its 19-century things and particularly things, paintings like this. This fellow is really loved and adored by Spaniards and Spanish collections, and when these come up on market, they're crazed for them, they really bid them up. A painting like this would-- even though it's this small-- would go for about $10,000 to $15,000.
GUEST: Wow! Hmm, okay, that's...
APPRAISER: Well, they say good things come in small packages. This is, this is certainly one.
