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image captionLiz Vella had been urged by her son Dylan to get the picture restored on the TV show
A woman who inherited a painting of Charles II was stunned to find out it was one of the earliest-ever paintings of the monarch.
Liz Vella, from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, took the dirty artwork to experts on BBC show The Repair Shop.
As it was restored, it emerged the painting was from the late 1600s and was of historical significance.
Painting conservator Lucia Scalisi said the portrait and its condition after so long was quite exceptional .
Rare 17th-century painting of Charles II unearthed by seven-year-old boy
History buff Dylan Maggs convinced his mother to take the painting, which once hung on his grandparents wall, to be restored on BBC show
21 April 2021 • 6:00am
Dylan Maggs, then aged seven, and mother Elizabeth Vella with the portrait
Credit: BBC
A seven-year-old history buff unearthed a contemporary 17th-century portrait of Charles II after studying Britain’s kings and queens.
Dylan Maggs fell in love with the painting that his mother, Elizabeth Vella, had inherited from her grandparents.
She believed it to be a 19th century work and had packed it away. But Dylan convinced her to take it to The Repair Shop, BBC One’s restoration series.