A Moroccan landscape painted by Winston Churchill and owned by Angelina Jolie sold at auction on Monday for more than US$11.5 million, smashing the previous record for a work by Britain’s World War II leader.

Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque sold at Christie’sin London for 8,285,000 pounds ($11,590,715). The pre-sale estimate was 1.5million pounds to 2.5 million pounds, and the previous record price for aChurchill painting was just under 1.8 million pounds.

The image of the

12th-century mosque in Marrakech at sunset, with the Atlas Mountains in the

background, is a piece of both political and Hollywood history.

The only

painting that Britain’s wartime prime minister completed during the 1939-45

conflict, it was completed after the January 1943 Casablanca Conference, where

Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt planned the defeat of Nazi

Germany.

The two leaders

visited Marrakech after the conference so that Churchill could show Roosevelt

the city’s beauty. Churchill gave the painting to Roosevelt as a memento of the

trip.

The painting was

sold by Roosevelt’s son after the president’s death in 1945, and had several

owners before Jolie and partner Brad Pitt bought it in 2011.

The couple

separated in 2016 and have spent years enmeshed in divorce proceedings, amid

speculation about the division of their extensive art collection.

They were declared

divorced in 2019 after their lawyers asked for a bifurcated judgment, meaning

that two married people can be declared single while other issues, including

finances and child custody, remain.

The painting was

sold by the Jolie Family Collection. The buyer wasn’t immediately identified.