Titian masterpiece breaks record for the painter as it sells for £17.6m

A stolen painting by Italian Renaissance master Titian, which was once found in a plastic bag at a London bus stop, has broken the artist’s auction record.

Rest On The Flight Into Egypt, described as a masterpiece, was sold for £17.6m by London auction house Christie’s.

The painting, which shows the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus with Joseph looking on, is believed to have been painted around 1510 and has an “extraordinary history”.

Once owned by Napoleon, who looted it from a palace in Vienna, the painting was bought by the 4th Marquess of Bath in 1878, where it remained in Lord Bath’s collection at Longleat House in Wiltshire and hung for many years in the state drawing room.

But in January 1995, thieves drove up to Longleat, put a ladder against the wall, smashed through a first-floor window and stole the painting, then valued at £3m.

The raid triggered a seven-year search operation led by Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard detective recruited by Lord Bath, before the painting was eventually recovered in exchange for a £100,000 ransom.

To aid his search, Mr Hill enlisted the help of known art criminal David Duddin, who was convicted of stealing a £400,000 Rembrandt painting.

Mr Hill approached Duddin in prison in 1999 and he agreed to help using his underworld contacts.

This, in turn, led to an approach by another man who helped track it down.

Mr Hill, who had developed a formidable reputation for his undercover work with the Met, eventually collected the painting from a bus stop in Richmond, south-west London, wrapped in a blue and white plastic bag, minus its frame.

The unidentified man was reputedly paid the £100,000 reward, while Duddin also got a fee.

Mr Hill insisted that neither was involved in the crime.

The painting underwent conservation work but was not badly damaged.

However, it was recently put up for sale, with an auction estimate of £15m-£20m, by the 8th Marquess of Bath.

Unique rarity

Lord Bath explained ahead of the sale: “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 buyer, who has not been identified, joins an eclectic and illustrious owners.

The painting was first documented in the collection of the Venetian merchant, Bartolomeo della Nave, whose collection included 15 works by Titian.

The majority of the collection was acquired by James, 1st Duke of Hamilton, and sent to England before being sold, on his execution by parliament in 1649, to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands.

The painting remained in the imperial collection, passing through several hands, before it was transferred, in 1781, to the Belvedere Palace in Vienna by Emperor Joseph II. From here, it was looted by French troops in 1809 for the Napoleon museum, which was assembled by the Bonaparte family.

It was subsequently owned by Scottish landowner Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, before being acquired by the 4th Marquess of Bath at a Christie’s auction in 1878.

Orlando Rock, chairman of Christie’s UK, said of this week’s record sale: “This result is a tribute to the impeccable provenance and quiet beauty of this sublime early masterpiece by Titian, which is one of the most poetic products of the artist’s youth.

“This picture has captured the imaginations of audiences for more than half a millennia and will no doubt continue to do so.”

Lord Bath said the painting had “an extraordinary history” and that the interest in the sale demonstrated “how the fascination with this exquisite early masterpiece has been maintained across the centuries.”

The previous auction record for a Titian was the £10.6m paid for A Sacra Conversazione at a 2011 Sotheby’s sale in New York.