The masterpiece that was missing for seven years after being stolen from an English country home set a new record high price for a work by Titian.
BUSINESS INSIDER
An early painting by one of Europe’s most famous painters was auctioned for a record high price years after it was recovered 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, was sold for over £17.5 million ($22.3 million) on July 2, according to Christie’s. It was the highest-priced work to be sold that evening and set a record for any work by Titian, the auction house said.
The painting’s longtime owners, the family of a British nobles, held onto the painting after it was previously sold by Christie’s in 1878. In 1995, however, the work was stolen from the walls of the family’s country house, Longleat, along with two other paintings that are still reportedly missing.
In 2002, the painting was recovered by Charles Hill, an ex-Scotland Yard detective who died in 2021. He had announced a £100,000 reward for information leading to the painting’s recovery.
He told The Telegraph in 2002 that he was contacted by a tipster who had Hill drive him around until they reached a bus stop in west London where an old man was standing beside a red, white and blue shopping bag that contained the painting.
