Measuring just 16cm by 21cm, Rembrandt van Rijn’s Abraham and the Angels (1646) may be diminutive in size, but its price tag is anything but. Last publicly sold for £64 in 1848, the Old Testament oil painting is now expected to make $20m to $30m at Sotheby’s in New York in January. The picture has been consigned by Mark Fisch, a trustee of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a deal no doubt sweetened by the fact that Sotheby's has guaranteed the work, effectively purchasing it. A third-party backer may yet emerge. Fisch bought the work from Sotheby’s senior vice president Otto Naumann along with Alfred Bader in 2005 for an undisclosed sum, likely to be in the £5m range according to the Dutch dealer Jan Six, who has made several Rembrandt discoveries in recent years.