38 | JULY 6 • 2023 

A 

true story that took 
place in 1995: It con-
cerns the legacy of an 
unusual man with an unusual 
name: Mr. Ernest Onians, a 
farmer in East Anglia, England, 
whose main business was as 
a supplier of pigswill. Known 
as an eccentric, 
his hobby was 
collecting paint-
ings. He used 
to go around 
local auctions 
and whenever a 
painting came on 
sale, especially if 
it was old, he would make a bid 
for it. Eventually he collected 
more than 500 canvases. There 
were too many to hang them 
all on the walls of his relatively 
modest home, Baylham Mill 
in Suffolk. So, he simply piled 
them up, keeping some in his 
chicken sheds.
His children did not share 
his passion. They knew he was 
odd. He used to dress scruffily. 
Afraid of being burgled, he 
rigged up his own home-made 

alarm system, using klaxon 
horns powered by old car bat-
teries, and always slept with a 
loaded shotgun under his bed. 
When he died, his children 
put the paintings on sale by 
Sotheby’s, the London auction 
house. Before any major sale of 
artworks, Sotheby’s puts out a 
catalogue so that interested buy-
ers can see in advance what will 
be on offer.
A great art expert, Sir Denis 
Mahon (1910-2011), was look-
ing through the catalogue one 
day when his eye was caught by 
one painting, in particular. The 
photograph in the catalogue, 
no larger than a postage stamp, 
showed a rabble of rampaging 
people setting fire to a large 
building and making off with 
loot. Onians had bought it at a 
country house sale in the 1940s 
for a mere 12 pounds. The cat-
alogue listed the painting as the 
Sack of Carthage, painted by a 
relatively little-known artist of 
the 17th century, Pietro Testa. 
It estimated that it would fetch 
15,000 pounds.

Mahon was struck by one 
incongruous detail. One of 
the looters was making off 
with a seven-branched cande-
labrum. What, Mahon won-
dered, was a menorah doing in 
Carthage? Clearly the painting 
was not depicting that event. 
Instead, it was a portrait of 
the Destruction of the Second 
Temple by the Romans. But if 
what he was looking at was not 
the Sack of Carthage, then the 
artist was probably not Testa.
Mahon remembered that 
the great 17th century artist 
Nicholas Poussin had painted 
two portraits of the destruction 
of the second temple. One was 
hanging in the art museum in 
Vienna. The other, painted in 
1626 for Cardinal Barberini, 
had disappeared from public 
view sometime in the 18th 
century. No one knew what had 
happened to it. With a shock, 
Mahon realized that he was 
looking at the missing Poussin.
At the auction, he bid for the 
picture. When a figure of the 
eminence of Sir Dennis bid for 

a painting, the other potential 
buyers knew that he must know 
something they did not, so they 
too put in bids. Eventually Sir 
Dennis bought the painting for 
155,000 pounds. A few years 
later he sold it for its true worth, 
4.5 million pounds, to Lord 
Rothschild who donated it to 
the Israel Museum in Jerusalem 
where it hangs today in the 
memory of Sir Isaiah Berlin.
I know this story only 
because, at Lord Rothschild’s 
request, I, together with the 
then director of the national 
gallery, Neil MacGregor, gave 
a lecture on the painting while 
it was shown briefly in London 
before being taken to its new 
and permanent home. I tell the 
story because it is so graphic an 
example of the fact that we can 
lose a priceless legacy simply 
because, not loving it, we do 
not come to appreciate its true 
value. From this we can infer a 
corollary: we inherit what we 
truly love.
This surely is the moral 
of the story of the daughters 
of Zelophehad in this week’s 
parshah. Recall the story: 
Zelophehad, of the tribe of 
Manasseh, had died in the 
wilderness before the alloca-
tion of the land. He left five 
daughters but no sons. The 
daughters came before Moses, 
arguing that it would be unjust 
for his family to be denied 
their share in the land simply 
because he had daughters 
but not sons. Moses brought 
their case before God, who 
told him: “What Zelophehad’s 
daughters are saying is right. 
You must certainly give 
them property as an inher-
itance among their father’s 
relatives and give their father’s 
inheritance to them” (Num. 
27:7). And so it came to pass.
The Sages spoke of 
Zelophehad’s daughters in the 
highest praise. They were, they 
said, very wise and chose the 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

 The Lost 
Masterpiece

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

