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An early painting by one of Europe’s most famous artists has been auctioned for a record price, years after it was discovered in a shopping bag at a bus stop.
An early painting by famous 16th-century Italian painter Titian, “Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” sold for more than 17.5 million pounds ($22.3 million) on July 2. It was the most expensive work sold that night and set a record for a Titian work, according to the auction house. Said.
The painting has remained in the care of its long-time owners, an aristocratic English family, since it was sold at Christie’s in 1878. But in 1995, it was stolen, along with two other paintings, from a wall at the family’s country home, Longleat, and remains missing ever since.
In 2002, the painting was recovered by former Scotland Yard detective Charles Hill, who died in 2021, who offered a £100,000 reward for information leading to the painting’s recovery.
he He told the Telegraph In 2002, Hill was contacted by an informant who drove him around to a bus stop in West London, where he saw an elderly man standing next to a red, white and blue shopping bag containing the painting.
“The problem with stealing a famous painting is that there is no way to sell it,” Hill told The Telegraph, “but if a reasonable reward is offered the painting could be found.”
When the painting was discovered, it was reported to be worth £5 million, and ahead of its recent auction, Christie’s estimated it would fetch between £15 million and £25 million.
Titian’s work isn’t the only stolen art to be recovered in such a state that it astonished curators. In 2003, a New York City woman found a painting worth $1 million that had been stolen about 16 years earlier in a pile of garbage bags. And in September 2023, a Vincent van Gogh painting stolen in 2020 was found in an IKEA bag outside an art detective’s apartment.