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Long-lost Titian portrait to be sold at auction

Posted on: Friday, 16 September 2005, 07:53 CDT

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - A unique portrait by Italian Old Master Titian, painted over and rediscovered more than 400 years later, is expected to make more than 5 million pounds (9 million dollars) when it is sold at auction in December.

Revealed by X-rays and painstakingly restored, Titian's Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter was unfinished when the Renaissance master died in 1576 and painted over with Tobias and the Angel, probably by one of Titian's pupils, Leonardo Corona.

"It is a singularly beautiful picture. There is an intimacy in the relationship between the mother and daughter. There is no doubt about that," said Francis Russell, deputy chairman of auction house Christie's at a pre-sale viewing on Friday.

"The fact that the picture was left unfinished means that it would not have been considered of value at the time but it also indicates that it was probably not a commission," he said.

The coats of paint that hid the original portrait preserved it from the ravages of time, and the absence of varnish meant that restorer Alec Cobbe knew he was approaching the original when he reached a layer of grime that covered it.

The painting shows a young woman staring calmly but resolutely out of the canvas with her left arm protectively draped over the shoulder of a young girl who is gazing reverentially upwards.

It is unique in that not only did Titian, whose real name was Tiziano Vecellio, rarely paint women, he was previously thought never to have painted a mother and daughter together.

There is no record of the work, probably painted in the 1550s when the elderly Titian was already the most famous and sought-after painter in Italy, but it is believed to be of the artist's own daughter Emelia and her daughter.

The first reference to Tobias and the Angel does not appear until the mid 18th century when it is described as a Titian.

The painting changed hands several times -- forming part of Czar Nicholas I's collection at one point -- before ending up in the hands of renowned French dealer Rene Gimpel in the 1920s.

When the German army invaded France in 1939, Gimpel shipped his collection to London for safekeeping, but took the secret of its temporary destination, a lock-up garage in the Bayswater district, with him when he died in a concentration camp in 1944.

It took his sons Ernest and Jean until 1946 to find where he had had the valuable collection stored.

In 1947 and again in 1963, Tobias and the Angel failed to sell as a Titian at auctions by Sothebys and then Christie's.

Eventually Jean Gimpel sent the picture for X-ray by the Courtauld Institute, which found the underlying composition.

After years of intermittent and painstaking restoration by Cobbe, the purity of the original finally saw the light of day as the centerpiece of an exhibition in Madrid in 2003.

The painting will go to auction for the first time in its new, and original, guise in London on December 8.

Source: REUTERS

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