It was just after sunrise on a June morning. “Nicolo,” whose real name cannot be 1to the public because of Italy's privacy laws, 2working the whole night at a factory in Turin. As he often did, he stopped by the “after work auction（拍卖）”3 by the Italian police where things 4on the trains were sold to the highest bidder. There, among many other things, Nicolo spotted two paintings he thought would look 5above his dining room table. Nicolo and another bidder 6until Nicolo finally won the paintings for $32.
When Nicolo retired and went to live in Sicily, he 7the paintings with him. He hung them above the same table he had 8from Turin. His son, age 15, who had 9an art appreciation class, thought that there was something 10 about the one with a young girl sitting on a garden chair. It was signed(签名) “Bonnato” or so he thought, but when he 11 it, he only found “Bonnard," a French 12he had never heard of. He bought a book and was13to find a picture of the artist Pierre Bonnard sitting on the same chair in the same14 as his father's painting.
"That's the garden in our picture," Nicolo's son told his father. They 15learned that the painting they16was called "The Girl with Two Chairs". They 17the other painting and learned that it was 18Paul Gauguin's “Still Life of Fruit on a Table with a Small Dog". The19called the Italian Culture Ministry; the official confirmed that the paintings were20and worth as much as $50 million.
