A Titian painting has sold for £17.6m at auction after being found in a plastic bag at a bus stop. BBC News reports that the work, described as a masterpiece, was stolen from Longleat House, a stately home in Wiltshire, in 1995. In 2002, the painting was found at a bus stop in London, with no frame and wrapped only in a plastic bag.
Who was Titian?
Titian is considered to be one of the greatest painters of the Renaissance. He was born in Italy around 1490, and moved to Venice at the age of ten. He trained in the workshop of the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccato, and later with Giorgione, which is when it is thought that the artist developed his distinctive and skillful use of colour.
He first made his name as a portraitist, and later won commissions to create various public religious paintings. This led to wider success, and he rose to the highly prestigious position of principal painter to the imperial court. In his later years, the artist developed a freer style that became known as ‘magical abstraction.’
Some of his most famous works include Bacchus and Ariadne and The Holy Family with a Shepherd.
Why is the recovered painting so important?
The recently sold painting, titled Rest On The Flight Into Egypt, is thought to have been painted in 1510 when Titian was just 20 years old. The auction price of £17.6m is a new world record for the sale of a work by the Renaissance artist. It had a pre-auction estimate of between £15m and £20m, so it is right on target.
The two foot wide painting depicts a religious scene and is thought to have had a turbulent history. The first owner of the work was a Venetian merchant, and it changed hands many times. It is thought to have passed to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, before being hung at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, and passed to an Austrian Archduke.
In 1809, the Titian work was looted by Napoleon’s troops during the French occupation of Vienna, although it was returned by a national museum some years later. It somehow then made its way to a Scottish landowner, Sir James Hamilton of Holyroodhouse, before being sold at auction to the Marquess of Bath of Longleat in 1878.
The painting was then stolen once more in 1995, before being recovered by Scotland Yard detective Charles Hill in 2002. Hill has played a significant role in the recovery of several other stolen artworks, including Edvard Munch’s The Scream in 1994.
Lord Bath, who succeeded his father as the Marquess of Bath in 2020, inheriting the Longleat estate, told the BBC that the painting had an “extraordinary history”.
He said: “We have a considerable long-term investment strategy at Longleat and have decided to sell this asset to further this agenda at a time when the market for paintings of such unique rarity is so strong.”
Andrew Fletcher, Christie’s global head of the Old Masters Department, said it was the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market “in more than a generation”.
He added that the picture was “a truly outstanding example of the artist’s pioneering approach to both the use of colour and the representation of the human form in the natural world”. He said the piece secured Titian’s status as “one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art”.
The story of another lost Titian
In 2021, an undiscovered Titian was found in a parish church in Ledbury, Herefordshire. The work hung at St Michael and All Angels Church unidentified for over 100 years, after being gifted in 1909. The large scale work is a depiction of the Last Supper.
Art historian Ronald Moore told the BBC: “He was a very popular and busy artist and I think he just never got time to work on it and finish it. When Titian died, the plague was around and a lot of people were dying and I think that perhaps influenced his son to turn the painting into a family portrait.”
The 12 foot wide painting was heavily discoloured, but has since been restored to its former glory.