CANTERBURY, England (RNS\/ENInews) A self-effacing multimillionaire has become a local hero after buying a series of 17th-century religious paintings and then donating them back to the Church of England in a bid to help boost art tourism.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Ruffer, 59, paid 15 million pounds (about $21.3 million) for a series of paintings of the biblical patriarch Jacob and his sons by Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbaran, according to ENInews.<\/p>\n
The eight-foot paintings, completed between 1640 and 1645, have been housed at Auckland Castle, the official residence of the Anglican bishop of Durham, since 1756, after a bishop bought them for a little less than
\n125 pounds (about $200).<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the managers of the Church of England’s 5 billion-pound investment portfolio proposed selling the paintings at auction in hopes of using the proceeds to fund church ministry in poorer parts of England.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people in northeast England signed a petition asking that the paintings remain at the castle, and supported a campaign organized by Member of Parliament Helen Goodman to keep them in Britain.<\/p>\n
Ruffer, who co-founded the successful Ruffer Investment Management in 1994, stepped in to buy the paintings. Talks have started between the National Trust, a British historic preservation charity, and the Durham County Council to open the castle to greater public access. Civil leaders hope the ongoing presence of the Zurbaran paintings will boost tourism.<\/p>\n
– TREVOR GRUNDY<\/strong>, Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CANTERBURY, England (RNS\/ENInews) A self-effacing multimillionaire has become a local hero after buying a series of 17th-century religious paintings and then donating them back to the Church of England in a bid to help boost art tourism. Jonathan Ruffer, 59, paid 15 million pounds (about $21.3 million) for a series of paintings of the biblical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[211,269,266,270,267,268,2202],"class_list":["post-2792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-rns","tag-art","tag-church-of-england","tag-england","tag-jonathan-ruffer","tag-millionaire","tag-painting","tag-rns"],"yoast_head":"\n