AN art work of major international importance, linking two men who were distinguished in their field, is to go on display after years of conservation.

Gianlorenzo Bernini's Portrait of Nicolas Poussin was acquired by York Art Gallery in 2000 for £510,000 with the help of a number of donations.

Since then, it has been in the expert hands of conservator Mark Roberts, who has transformed it and returned it to its original shape.

Curator Richard Green said: "In the 19th Century the portrait was enlarged to an oval format by the addition of pieces of canvas on all four sides and it was given an inappropriate 18th Century-style frame - all of which had a sweetening effect.

"Those additions have now been removed and the painting reframed. The result is that the portrait has regained its original directness and immediacy, with the sitter's head almost bursting out of the frame."

Bernini (1598-1680) was the foremost sculptor of the Italian Baroque era, and was also responsible for as many as 200 pictures, but only a handful of them are securely associated with him.

He and the French classicist painter Poussin (1594-1665) were well acquainted with each other and both worked for the same powerful family, in Rome.

The portrait had been in a private collection in North Yorkshire for more than 200 years when it was acquired by the art gallery.

Although the identity of the sitter has never been in doubt, the painting had been attributed to Poussin himself until the early 1960s when Bernini's name was put forward, a view now fully accepted by the art world.