Auction of the Week: Twice-Stolen Titian Painting, Found at a Bus Stop, Sells for Record $22 Million

The painting, which measures just 18.25 inches by 24.75 inches, is one of the last early religious works by Titian that remains in the private sector, and it depicts Mary, Joseph, and Jesus resting during their journey to Egypt to seek refuge.

Coming to the market for the first time in more than 145 years, it was last auctioned by Christie’s in 1878, when it entered the collection at Longleat House, the home of the descendants of John Alexander Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath. After it was stolen in 1995, Thynne’s heirs called in an art detective, Charles Hill, to help hunt it down. Hill, who had made a name for himself discovering stolen works of art, had spent years chasing tips regarding Titian’s painting after the 1995 theft and had issued a $150,000 award via a radio address, according to the New York Times. In 2002, Hill received a tip that led him the bus stop, where the painting was laying wrapped in brown paper next to an unidentified—and apparently unaware—older gentleman.

“It is a picture that embodies the revolution in painting made by Titian at the start of the 16th century and is a truly outstanding example of the artist’s pioneering approach to both the use of color and the representation of the human form in the natural world, the artistic vocabulary that secured his status as the first Venetian painter to achieve fame throughout Europe in his lifetime and his position as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art,” Andrew Fletcher, Christie’s Global Head of the Old Masters Department, said in a statement.

The artist’s previous record of $16.9 million was set at Sotheby’s in New York during the 2011 sale, A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria.