A major new exhibition focused on old master painter Peter Paul Rubens in London is to include the recent “big discovery” of a genuine work, which had been written off as a fake for six decades.

The Royal Academy of Arts is to stage the first UK exhibition concentrating on the influence of the Flemish painter who died in 1640, which opens in January.

Nico Van Hout, curator of the exhibition, discovered the small panel titled "The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus" on a chance trip to the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and was convinced it was by Rubens.