Story highlights The marble bust of Napoleon was commissioned in 1904It is the only known political or military figure sculpted by Rodin(CNN) In the corner of the council room of the town hall in Madison, New Jersey, sits a sculpture by Auguste Rodin that had been overlooked for years. With no paperwork for the marble bust, no one at the Hartley Dodge Memorial, which serves as the town hall, had any idea of the treasure they had on their hands. The discovery came only in 2014, when the Hartley Dodge Foundation, which maintains the building's artworks, hired 22-year-old Mallory Mortillaro as a temporary archivist. While making a list of what was in the building, Mortillaro got to the bust of Napoleon Bonaparte that had been pushed up against a wall of the room. It had recently spent two years in a plywood box during renovations, surrounded by jackhammers and building debris, the foundation said.

Source: CNN October 22, 2017 02:15 UTC