COLLECTORS’ LOST TITIAN MASTERPIECE UNDER HAMMER

There was a short, but glorious, period when The McManus in Dundee hosted a sequence of world-class travelling exhibitions. You may remember the crowds thronging to Leonardo Da Vinci drawings, Cecil Beaton’s royal photographs and those wonderful Roman treasures loaned by the British Museum which smashed attendance records.

This extraordinary gold rush of crowdpulling displays began in 2010 when The McManus captured a showing of Titian’s Diana and Acteon.

One thousand people a day flocked to see the c1556 masterpiece.

Now, the Dorotheum sale of Old Master paintings in Vienna on Wednesday includes a lost Titian, The Penitent Magdalen, the artist’s most frequently commissioned theme.

Demand for paintings of the saint was strong for more than 40 years during which the artist repeatedly altered and revised the composition. Perhaps it was a quest for perfection, perhaps merely to provide patrons with their own individualised version of the theme.

The Dorotheum’s Magdalen has only recently been discovered by art historians.

What is certain is that the painting was in the great art collection of Christina, Queen of Sweden (1629-1689), an avid and learned collector.

It was then acquired for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans in 1721. It also seems probable that it was one of the Penitent Magdalens procured from Titian for the collection of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II.

Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian (c14851576), The Penitent Magdalen, oil on canvas, 45 x 38 inches, will be sold on Wednesday with a £1-£1.5 million estimate.

Coincidentally, one of the last remaining Michelangelo drawings in private hands will go to auction at Christie’s in Paris on May 18. The sketch of a nude man is estimated at £30 million.

The Penitent Magdalen, by Titian.