Dr Brown, director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, told The Culture Show that it was "a substantial discovery".

BBC: Van Dyck painting 'found online'

Since it was named the Ashmolean, Mr Ashmole's name will live for as long as there is a university in Oxford.

ECONOMIST: Art.view

C. on loan from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.

WSJ: The Ur-Metropolis | Uruk | Pergamon Museum | By A.J. Goldmann

Meanwhile, the Ashmolean Museum, also in Oxford, has a tiny show of Brazilian baroque art, including expressive wood carvings by a legendary 18th-century mulatto sculptor who was nicknamed O Aleijadinho, the Little Cripple, because in later life he became so disfigured by disease that his assistants had to strap his tools to his wrists.

ECONOMIST: Brazilian art

Hired away from the University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, where she was textile curator in its department of Eastern art, Ms. Barnes has researched how textile techniques and designs spread, often disseminated by merchants plying the sea-lanes.

WSJ: Eastern Expansion | Yale University Art Gallery | Ruth Barnes | Cultural Conversation by Lee Lawrence