France blocks export of €24m Cimabue artwork found in kitchen

Renaissance work sold to foreign bidder has now been declared 'national treasure'

France has blocked the export of a tiny early Renaissance masterpiece found in a French woman's kitchen that fetched more than a24m (20.5m) at auction and became the most expensive medieval painting ever sold.

Christ Mocked, by the 13th-century Florentine painter Cimabue, had hung for decades above a cooking hotplate in the kitchen of a 1960s house near Compiigne, north of Paris, before it was spotted by an auctioneer who had come to value furniture for a house move.