Export of £7.5m Michelangelo drawing found pasted into album is barred

The Government highlighted its determination to keep important art works in the country yesterday by preventing two important pieces from being sold abroad.

The temporary export stops on a drawing by the Renaissance master Michelangelo and a portrait by the 18th- century British artist Benjamin West follow growing concern at the loss of works.

Baroness Blackstone, the Arts minister, placed a temporary bar on the export of Study of a Mourning Woman, by Michelangelo, recently discovered pasted into an album at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. The work is on offer at £7.5m.

Lady Blackstone also placed a temporary bar on the export of a portrait by Benjamin West of the Lieutenant-General, the Hon Robert Monckton (1764). She pointed to the importance of the sitter as one of the most prominent British officers to take part in the Seven Years' War, and his role in the capture of Martinique. The portrait is being offered for sale to a British buyer at £775,000.

The bars on export of both works will last until at least 28 January 2003. Sir Nicholas Serota, the Tate Gallery's director, recently spoke out over the inability of his institution to raise the funds to buy Georges Braque's Atelier V, which had been hanging on the Tate's walls for four years on loanand which the gallery had been offered at a knock-down price by its Swiss owner. The painting was finally sold to the New York Museum of Modern Art for $6m (£4m).

The money available at the Tate for acquisitions is £2m a year, £200,000 less than in 1982.