FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
LONDON — Titian’s masterpiece that Christie’s, the London auction house, will put up for sale on July 2 has an adventurous and in some ways daring story. As Orlando Rock, president of Christie’s, said, “after having passed through the hands of dukes, archdukes and emperors, this magical votive painting has the rare notoriety of having been stolen twice, the first by Napoleon and the second in the mid-1990sTO”.
It’s about the «Rest during the flight into Egypt»an early work by the Italian master which comes to the market for the first time in more than 145 years: last sold by Christie’s in 1878, it is one of the last religious works from Titian’s early years to remain in private hands and is offered with an estimate of between 15 and 25 million pounds (between 17 and 30 million euros).
Dated around 1510, the painting is documented for the first time at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the collection of Bartolomeo della Nave, “drug merchant”. Venetian active in the spice trade, who owned a fabulous collection that included at least fifteen other works by Titian: at that time, the estimate of the painting was 200 pounds (about 235 euros).
Through Bartolomeo’s brother, Andrea della Nave, and Basil Feilding, count of Denbigh and ambassador to Venice of King Charles I, most of the Venetian merchant’s collection was purchased by the English sovereign’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Hamilton, and taken to England. But during the Revolution, in 1649, the poor duke was executed and the paintings in his possession were sold toArchduke of AustriaLeopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands.
Titian thus became part of the imperial collection of the Habsburgs and passed from Charles VI, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, to Maria Theresa and finally to Joseph II: transferred in 1781 to the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, it was however stolen by Napoleon’s troops in 1809 and destined for the museum of the French emperor.
Following the painting it becomes the property of a Scottish landowner, Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, amateur artist and great patron of Turner, the genius of English Romantic painting. Finally, in 1878, the painting comes purchased by the Marquess of Bath and becomes part of the collection held at Langleat House.
There it has remained to this day, except for one significant interval: in 1995 the Titian was stolen and a reward of £100,000 was offered for its discovery. But just seven years later, in 2002, it was recovered, miraculously intact, at a bus stop in central London, kept in a bag but without its frame anymore. It was found by a famous art detective, Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard investigator.
“This sublime masterpiece is one of the most poetic products of Titian’s youth,” said the president of Christie’s. TO”It is the most important work by Titian to hit the auction market in more than a generation — added Andrew Fletcher, global head of Christie’s for Old Masters — and one of the artist’s few masterpieces remaining in private hands. It is a painting that embodies the pictorial revolution implemented by Titian at the beginning of the 16th century.”
But it is its adventurous story that adds further charm to the masterpiece: and will certainly increase its value in the eyes of collectors.
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