- “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” and other works were stolen from an English country house in 1995.
- The painting, by an old Venetian master, was found at a bus stop in 2002 after a tip-off.
- Christie’s auction house said the £17.5 million sale price was a record for a Titian work.
An old painting by one of Europe’s most famous painters has sold at auction for a record price years after being found in a shopping bag at a bus stop.
“The Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” an early work by the famed 16th-century Italian painter Titian, sold for more than 17.5 million pounds ($22.3 million) on July 2, according to Christie’s. It was the most expensive work sold that night and a record for a Titian work, the auction house said.
The painting’s long-time owners, the family of a British nobleman, held on to the painting after it was sold by Christie’s in 1878. In 1995, however, the work was stolen from the walls of the family’s country home, Longleat, along with two other paintings that are still believed to be missing.
In 2002, the painting was recovered by Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard detective who died in 2021. He had announced a £100,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the painting.
He told the Telegraph in 2002 that he had been contacted by an informant who asked Hill to drive him to a bus stop in west London where an elderly man was 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 can be recovered.”
Media reports at the time of the painting’s recovery put it at £5 million. Prior to the recent sale, Christie’s had estimated the painting could fetch between £15 million and £25 million.
Titian isn’t the only stolen artwork that’s been found in a condition that might shock a curator. In 2003, a New York woman found a million-dollar painting that had been stolen about 16 years earlier in a pile of trash 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.
