Rubens sells for record £49.5m

A long-lost painting by Flemish Old Master Peter Paul Rubens has been sold to an anonymous bidder for £49.5 million, the highest amount paid for a painting in Britain.

The Massacre of the Innocents was sold to London-based oriental manuscripts dealer Sam Fogg, who was in the sale room on a mobile phone bidding on behalf of a private collector.

Last night Mr Fogg would not disclose his client's identity or nationality, but in the past he has acted for John Paul Getty Jr and for David Thomson, son of Lord Thomson of Fleet, former proprietor of The Times.

Last night than 500 people crowded into the sale room at Sotheby's in London and the bidding began at £3 million.

Before the sale Sotheby's had valued the elaborate and gory painting - which had been mistakenly attributed to minor artist and to Rubens follower Jan van den Hoecke for 200 years - at up to £6 million.

A Sotheby's spokeswoman said: "It was completely wonderful. The bidding started at £3 million, jumped to £3.2million, then £3.8 million. Then somebody shouted out £6million and it went up in millions from then on. People were not messing around, they were very sure they wanted that painting."

The record price for the Rubens surpasses the sale of Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet which fetched £49,005,059 at Christie's in New York in 1990.

Because of fluctuations in the pound-dollar price, however, the van Gogh fetched more in dollars than the $77million eventually paid for The Massacre of the Innocents.

Yesterday's sale was 22 years to the day after Rubens's Samson and Delilah - assumed by experts to have been painted at the same time as The Massacre of the Innocents - was sold at auction to London's National Gallery for £2.5 million.

The work - created between 1609 and 1611 - shows naked children being torn from their mothers, put to the sword and trampled underfoot by soldiers of King Herod seeking to kill the infant Jesus.

With luminous colours and struggling and intertwined bodies of women, soldiers and babies, the picture is significant as it marks the dawn of the Baroque period in Northern Europe.

The auctioneer and chairman of Sotheby's Europe, Henry Wyndham, described the sale was unique and something he would never forget. He said: "It felt pretty good and it was extremely exciting for me and I hope it was exciting for everybody else as well.

"I believe this is the greatest Old Master painting that has come on the market, without a shadow of a doubt. I have always loved this picture and that's why I felt rather emotional about selling it."