Maria Puente

USA TODAY

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This could only happen in a Hollywood movie: A silly kiddie flick about a mouse, Stuart Little, led to the recovery of a lost Hungarian masterpiece not seen since 1928.

Now it's about to fetch as much as a quarter-million dollars at auction in Budapest, where it was created and where it will perhaps return for good.

And all because of Stuart Little?

Twitter is amazed.

Recall that the 1999 movie, based on E.B. White's classic 1945 children's book, was about a talking GCI mouse (voiced by Michael J. Fox) "born" to a Manhattan couple (played by Oscar winner Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie before he did House). This couple had nice stuff, including fancy paintings on the wall.

Cut to 2009 in Hungary, where an art historian named Gergely Barki is watching the movie at home with his young daughter. Suddenly, he spots one of the paintings on the wall, and nearly drops his daughter.

As he later explained to reporters, Barki is an expert writing a book on avant garde artist Róbert Berény, a leading painter in his native Hungary in the early 20th century.

Barki can't quite believe it but he thinks the painting on the wall of Stuart Little's New York apartment is a Berény painting, Sleeping Lady With a Black Vase, that hasn't been seen since an exhibit and sale in Hungary in 1928.

Barki embarked on a years-long mission to track down that painting, emailing everyone he could find connected with the movie.

Eventually, an assistant set designer got back to him, explaining she bought the painting for $500 at an antiques store in Pasadena because she thought its cool elegance would fit the interiors of the Little apartment. Later, she bought the painting herself from Sony because she liked it so much. When she talked to Barki, it was hanging on her bedroom wall.

After Barki confirmed the painting's identity, the set designer sold it to a private collector, who is now selling it in Hungary. It will be auctioned at the Virag Judit Art Gallery in Budapest on Dec. 13 and could fetch between $240,000 and $325,000.

The painting's style is expressionistic — Berény helped introduce Cubism and Expressionism to Hungary — and the model is his second wife, a cellist named Eta Breuer who posed for several of her husband's paintings.

How did the painting get to Pasadena? The provenance part of the story remains a mystery. Barki and other art experts speculate that it might have been purchased in 1928 by a Hungarian Jew, who then fled Hungary during the war and before the Nazis could steal it or destroy it.

"After the wars, revolutions and tumult of the 20th century, many Hungarian masterpieces are lost, scattered around the world," Barki told The Guardian.

One last Hollywood detail: Besides being known for his art, Berény was something of a ladies' man. One of his most famous alleged lovers: Marlene Dietrich.

The news of the painting's recovery inspired new interest in Berény on Twitter, where posters began tweeting their favorite paintings by the artist, who died in 1953. Check out a few: