Parisian flat containing €2.1 million painting lay untouched for 70 years

For 70 years the Parisian apartment had been left uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint of what was inside.

Mrs de Florian, a 'demimondaine' never returned to her Paris flat after the war and died at the age of 91 in 2010

The woman who owned the flat had left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned. But when she died recently aged 91, experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions and homed in on the flat near the Trinité church in Paris between the Pigalle red light district and Opera.

For 70 years the Parisian apartment had been left uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint of what was inside.