LONDON.- After overcoming overwhelming difficulties to keep Raphael’s “Madonna of the Pinks” in the country, and paying 22 million pounds ($41.7 million) expert James Beck, Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York and the President of ArtWatch International, told Friday’s edition of the Times the gallery had paid "a record price for a fake."

"They haven’t done their homework," Beck said. "It’s a disgrace. The National Gallery never checked any of them physically.

"When you’re spending government money, or anyone’s money it’s an omission. Frankly, it’s a kind of arrogance of the Establishment."

An ancestor of the Duke bought the 1507-8 picture in 1853 but it was long considered a copy until 1991 when Nicholas Penny, the Gallery’s curator, examined the picture and hailed it as the rediscovered masterpiece.

Beck told the paper his research led him to believe the painting was in fact made in 1827 by Vincenzo Camuccini, a frequent copyist of Raphael and a recognized faker.

The picture, so called because it depicts the Virgin Mary with a sprig of pink flowers, was bought from the Duke of Northumberland