Long-lost Canova sculpture bought for couple’s garden could fetch £8m

‘The expression of her face, and the beauty of her figure … are perfection,’ the poet Thomas Moore said of the Recumbent Magdalene. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

It was one of the last marble sculptures completed by the great Italian artist Antonio Canova before his death in 1822 and depicts Mary Magdalene in a state of grief.

But Maddalena Giacente (Recumbent Magdalene) – originally commissioned by the then British prime minister, Lord Liverpool – became an art world “sleeping beauty” as her authorship was gradually forgotten and her whereabouts became unknown.