MIRACLE of the Quails, a sixteenth century oil painting by Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerk, is on display in a museum for the first time at the Museum Resource Centre in Ludlow.

The display is part of a nationwide series of events to celebrate the completion of Your Paintings, a website for the entire UK national collection of oil paintings created by the BBC in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation.

Held in over 3,000 galleries, museums and other civic buildings around the country, these paintings span more than 600 years of art history.

Due to limitations of exhibition space, 80 per cent of these works are normally held in storage and not easily seen by the people who own them – the UK public.

One of these paintings is Miracle of the Quails, pictured, by Maarten van Heemskerk, whose work also hangs in The Hermitage, St Petersburg and National Gallery, London.

The painting, which is a huge 2.5 metres square, previously hung in the old Shrewsbury Borough Guildhall, but has been in storage for the past 10 years, as it has not been possible to find a space big enough to display it in.

“No other country has ever embarked on such a project to make accessible online its entire collection of oil paintings,”

said Andrew Ellis from the Public Catalogue Foundation.

“The result is an extraordinary rich and varied virtual gallery of paintings with styles and subject matters to suit all tastes and interests.

“Anyone can now contribute to the project by tagging paintings so that the paintings can be searched in future. Tagging is easy, fun and, for many, addictive.’

􀁧 To see and tag Your Paintings and find out more about visiting participating galleries, museums and public buildings in the West Midlands, visit: bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings