CNN reported that a 64-year-old German man found oil paintings dong in frames near a highway service station in the southeastern part of Bavaria in May. The man later handed it over to police in the western city of Cologne.
The police officers issued a notice calling on the real owners of the paintings to come and receive them. According to an initial assessment from an art expert, the two paintings are likely originals.
One of the two paintings is a smiling self-portrait by Italian artist Pietro Bellotti, dating back to 1665.
Painter Bellotti is best known for his portrait paintings. According to the Canesso painting studio in Switzerland, the artist "worked for famous families in Venice and beyond" including prestigious nobility such as the Red Ottoboni and the Governor of Milan.
The remaining painting depicts a boy smiling brightly, wearing a red male Talut hat, of unknown date, by Dutch artist Samuel van Hoogstraten.
Hoogstraten is a painter and writer trained under the Rembrandt period in Amsterdam, according to the Leiden Collection - one of the world's largest private collectors of works from the Dutch Golden Age.
The collector said that in the late 17th century, the upper class in La Hay "lined up to appear" in portraits painted by Hoogstraten.
This artist wrote a work called "Introduction to the College of Fine Arts" published in the year of his death, in 1678. The work is assessed by the UK National Museum as a "valuable source of information about Rembrandt's views on painting".
