Last updated at 10:52 01 June 2007

A masterpiece thought to depict a favourite mistress of King Charles II is expected to make up to £2 million at auction.

Portrait Of A Young Lady And Child As Venus And Cupid by Sir Peter Lely, the finest painter of the Restoration and official artist to the king, is being sold to raise money to save a castle in Kent.

The mistress may be Nell Gwyn but is more likely to be her predecessor, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland.

A description in an inventory of the period suggests the painting was kept in a secret panel in the royal bedchamber.

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It is being sold by the trustees of the Denys Eyre Bower bequest to save Chiddingstone Castle, near Tonbridge.

It is one of dozens of works representing more than 300 years of British art that can be seen at Christie's in London from Monday, in what the auction house is calling British Art Week.

The Lely is being sold in an Old Master auction on 5 July, but the majority of works on public view are being auctioned between 5 and 8 June. The sales are expected to realise about £25 million in total. Other works include a rediscovered chalk pastel by Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The work, Proserpine, depicts Rossetti's lover, Jane Morris, as the queen of Hades. It is expected to make up to £400,000.

The sales also include the finest private collection of pictures by LS Lowry ever to appear at auction. The six works include Good Friday, Daisy Nook, which was last sold at auction in 1970 for £16,800 but is now expected to sell for about £3 million.

Jonathan Horwich, deputy chairman of Christie's, said British Art Week stemmed from the realisation that it would be easier for buyers if the sales were concentrated in two weeks in June and November.

He said: "We thought: 'We'll have British Art Week, you'll know what you will see and you will know when it is.' And that's what happened."