Coming to the market for the first time in more than 145 years, Titian’s early masterpiece Rest on the Flight into Egypt will headline Christie’s Old Masters Part I sale on 2 July 2024, presenting a very rare opportunity for buyers to become part of the next chapter in this fabled picture’s remarkable story (estimate: £15,000,000 – 25,000,000). One of the last religious works from the artist’s celebrated early years to remain in private hands, the picture has passed through some of the greatest collections in Europe and was last auctioned by Christie’s in 1878, before entering the collection at Longleat House.
Orlando Rock, Chairman, Christie’s UK commented: “This sublime early masterpiece by Titian is one of the most poetic products of Titian’s youth. Of impeccable provenance and having passed through the hands of Dukes, Archdukes and Holy Roman Emperors, this magical devotional painting has the rare notoriety of having been stolen not once but twice – firstly by Napoleon and secondly in the late mid-1990s. We are honoured to be entrusted with bringing this important and beautifully observed painting to the market in London this July.”
Andrew Fletcher, Christie's Global Head of the Old Masters Department commented: “This is the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation and one of the very few masterpieces by the artist remaining in private hands. 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 colour 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.”
PROVENANCE
The roll call of illustrious provenance for this painting begins with it being first documented in the collection of the Venetian merchant, Bartolomeo della Nave (1571/79-1632), described in 1629 as a ‘mercante da droghe’, whose activities focused on the spice trade. Della Nave's inventory reveals an astonishing collection that is unlikely to have been equalled in Venice during his day and included no fewer than fifteen works by Titian, notably including The Gypsy Madonna of circa 1511; his Violante of circa 1510-15; the Nymph and Shepherd of circa 1570 (all in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum); and the artist’s mature masterpiece of 1565-76, The Death of Actaeon, now in the National Gallery, London. In 1636, the Longleat picture was valued at £200 in della Naves's inventory, twice the amount for the Death of Actaeon, suggesting Titian's early works were more highly prized than their later counterparts.
Through Bartolomeo’s brother, Andrea della Nave, and Basil Feilding, 2nd Earl of Denbigh, King Charles I’s ambassador to Venice, the majority of the collection was acquired en bloc by the latter’s brother-in-law, James, 1st Duke of Hamilton and sent to England. Following Hamilton’s execution by parliament in 1649, the collection was sold to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1647-1656. The picture appears in Teniers’ copper panel depicting The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Picture Gallery in Brussels (Madrid, Museo del Prado), where it is shown hanging alongside other works by Titian acquired from della Nave’s collection, among which are the Nymph and Shepherd, Violante, and his Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, circa 1511 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), an unfinished panel that the young Anthony van Dyck had made a sketch of during his visit to see the Venetian merchant’s collection in 1622.
The Longleat picture remained in the Imperial collection – passing by descent from Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (1685-1740), Vienna, to Maria Theresa (1717-1780), Holy Roman Empress, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, to Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1741-1790) – and was transferred to the Belvedere Palace in Vienna by 1781, where it was looted by French troops in 1809 for the Musée Napoléon. It was subsequently owned by Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar (1797-1864), a Scottish landowner, amateur artist and one of the most important patrons of Turner. Munro formed a celebrated collection that included Rembrandt’s Lucretia (Washington, National Gallery of Art), Veronese’s Vision of St. Helena (London, National Gallery), and at least ten pictures by Bonington, of which the finest was A fishmarket near Boulogne (New Haven, Yale Centre for British Art).
LONGLEAT - MAKING THE HEADLINES
Titian’s early masterpiece Rest on the Flight into Egypt was acquired by the 4th Marquess of Bath in 1878, more than 145 years ago. Enjoyed by multiple generations, the painting made the headlines in 1995 when it was stolen from Longleat. Seven years later, following a £100,000 reward being announced for information leading to the picture’s safe return, it was found in 2002 in a carrier bag in Greater London, minus the frame, by a leading art detective of the time – the late Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard officer.
THE DATE OF THE PAINTING
Always regarded as a youthful masterpiece by Titian and generally dated circa 1510, there are however some inevitable variations on the precise dating. In his 2012 exhibition at the National Gallery in London: Titian, A fresh look at nature, Antonio Mazzotta, who dates the picture to circa 1508-9, observed that the monumental figure of the Virgin ‘prefigures other Titian heroines’ from the period, notably that of Judith as Justice in the detached fresco fragment from the Merceria entrance to the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, circa 1508 (Venice, Ca d’Oro), a key early commission, and that of the Magdalen in the artist’s slightly later Noli me Tangere, 1511-12 (London, National Gallery). In his review of the 2012 National Gallery exhibition, the centrepiece of which was Titian’s Flight into Egypt of 1506-7 (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), Paul Hills singled out the Longleat picture for particular praise and the artist’s masterful use of colour: ‘The red of the Virgin’s dress, offset by the [white] napkin, is treated with marvellous breadth, and the ultramarine of her cloak is spread across the bank to meet the strong amber of Joseph’s mantle, which in turn contrasts with the violet of his robe. The solicitous movement of the figures, counterpoised by the tilt of tree-trunks, is underscored by this drama of colour.’
One of the largest pictures that George Stubbs – the most revered animal painter in the history of European Art – executed, and one of the last two on this scale of any subject to remain in private hands, Mares and Foals will be a highlight of Christie’s Old Masters Part I sale on 2 July, during Classic Week in London this summer (estimate: £7,000,000-10,000,000). Dated to circa 1769, this monumental canvas is the artist’s grandest statement on the theme of Mares and Foals, the series of paintings executed in the 1760s which arguably stand as Stubbs’ crowning achievement. The picture is believed to have been painted for the Prime Minister of Britain from 1768-1770, Augustus Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (1735-1811), who was part of the closely-connected nexus of ‘Whig’ statesmen that provided Stubbs with his most important patronage during this career-defining period. Having only appeared at auction once before, almost 50 years ago, it will be on public view in New York from 18 to 22 May, and in the pre-sale London exhibition which runs from 28 June to the morning of 2 July.
John Stainton, Christie's International Deputy Chairman, Old Master Paintings, commented: “George Stubbs’ genius for animal painting is nowhere more evident than in his series of Mares and Foals paintings. Steeped in scientific study, the artist created wholly original compositions which describe a bucolic idyll; seemingly informal yet conveying a sense of restrained grandeur. It is a great privilege to be offering this, Stubbs’ most ambitious work on the theme, in our summer sale.”
STUBBS AND HIS PATRONS
Stubbs arrived in London in 1758 or early 1759 and quickly came to the attention of Joshua Reynolds, the painter then emerging as the leading portraitist of his day. It was almost certainly through Reynolds that Stubbs was introduced to a circle of noblemen with a shared passion for horse racing, many of whom belonged to the recently founded Jockey Club and Brooks', the London club so central to the formation of the Whig political party. Figures such as the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Grafton and Lord Rockingham, in Stubbs' words, 'delight in horses, and who either breed or keep any considerable number of them' (cited from the artist’s introduction to his The Anatomy of the Horse).
Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, who had sat for Reynolds in 1759 and for whom this picture is believed to have been painted, was one of the first of these young Whigs to order work from Stubbs. Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke commissioned the first of the artist's Mares and Foals in circa 1761-2, a work showing six horses in what is presumably the park at Lydiard Tregoze, his house in Wiltshire. Bolingbroke's canvas must have been seen and admired by others within this Whig circle and thus followed, over the course of the decade, the most celebrated series of equine pictures from the golden age of British painting.
THE PICTURE
This painting last appeared on the market in 1976, since when it has been part of an important private collection in Illinois, U.S.A. A beautifully crafted composition, the picture is imbued with a calm and lyrical quality which is a hallmark of Stubbs’ Mares and Foals series. The last of his grand-scale equine set pieces, he masterfully brings a heightened nobility to his subjects in this work by presenting them on a more imposing scale than he had used previously. This is exemplified by the large grey Arabian mare on the far right of the group, theatrically lit against the brooding sky.
The 1760s bore witness to the full range and originality of Stubbs’ work. It was during these years that Stubbs painted his sublime Whistlejacket for Lord Rockingham (circa 1762, London, National Gallery) and Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, another outstanding masterpiece from the period, painted for Lord Bolingbroke in circa 1765, which set a world auction record for the artist when it sold at Christie’s in 2011 for £22.4 million.
The masterful naturalism which Stubbs achieved over the course of his career laid the foundations for artists who excelled in animal painting of subsequent generations such as Gericault and Degas.
STUBBS – THE EARLY YEARS
Born in Liverpool in 1724, Stubbs would have immediately come into contact with animals through his father's trade as a currier and leather seller. He drew from an early age, and by the early 1740s was painting professionally, his principal subject-matter at the time being portraits. He was in York from 1745-1753, before visiting Rome briefly in 1754. After two years back in Liverpool, he settled in Lincolnshire where he worked on his ground-breaking Anatomy of the Horse project, ahead of moving to London at the end of the 1750s.
The Madonna of the Cherries is one of the most celebrated paintings by Quentin Metsys, the father of the Antwerp school, to whom the National Gallery in London devoted a focused exhibition last year. The picture will be a highlight of the Old Masters Part I sale at Christie’s headquarters in London on 2 July, during Classic Week (estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000). Painted in Metsys’s maturity in the 1520s, The Madonna of the Cherries is a work that had a wide-reaching and long-lasting influence, inspiring generations of artists and giving rise to numerous copies and variants. The painting is on view at Christie’s New York until 22 May, before returning to London for the pre-sale exhibition from 28 June to 2 July.
Henry Pettifer, Christie’s International Deputy Chairman, Old Master Paintings commented: “We are delighted to be offering this work by Quentin Metsys that has only recently been recognised as the prime version of his celebrated late masterpiece – The Madonna of the Cherries – which helped cement his reputation as the founder of the Antwerp School of painting.”
PROVENANCE: A MUCH-PRIZED WORK OF GENIUS
In August 1615, the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert VII of Austria and Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia paid a visit to the wealthy Antwerp spice merchant Cornelis van der Geest (1577–1638), one of the foremost art collectors and connoisseurs of his age. From the treasures of his cabinet, the regents offered to acquire his most prized possession: Quentin Metsys’s Madonna of the Cherries. Their visit was commemorated thirteen years later by Willem van Haecht in his painting The Cabinet of
Cornelis van der Geest of 1628 (Antwerp, Rubenshuis), in which van der Geest is surrounded by a semi-fictional bevy of Antwerp’s artistic and social elite, including Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, as well as van der Geest’s nephew Cornelis de Licht and the Antwerp collector Peter Stevens, both of whom would successively own The Madonna of the Cherries. Van der Geest’s Kunstkammer stood both as a homage to Antwerp’s role in the arts and Flemish painting, at the centre of which The Madonna of the Cherries was the zenith.
A TRANSFORMATIVE CONSERVATION TREATMENT
All trace of Metsys’s Madonna of the Cherries was lost following its sale after the death of Peter Stevens in 1668. By the time the painting resurfaced in Paris at a sale in 1920, its composition had been altered including the addition of a curtain across the window and landscape and it was no longer recognised as the painting that had once belonged to van der Geest. With the overpainting and a thick layer of discoloured varnish, the painting was offered for sale in these Rooms in 2015 as a studio variant deriving from Metsys’s original, reflecting scholarly opinion at the time. Subsequent conservation was transformative, revealing the exceptional condition of the original paint surface and enabling scholars to recognise it as the prime of Metsys’s Madonna of the Cherries (see before and after images illustrated below).
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QUENTIN METSYS (LEUVEN 1465/6-1530 ANTWERP)
The Madonna of the Cherries
EstimateGBP 8,000,000 - 12,000,000![]()
MASTER OF MONTE OLIVETO (ACTIVE SIENA, C. 1305-35)
The Madonna and Child
EstimateGBP 800,000 - 1,200,000![]()
LOT 8TIZIANO VECELLIO, CALLED TITIAN (PIEVE DI CADORE C. 1485/90-1576 VENICE)
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt
EstimateGBP 15,000,000 - 25,000,000![]()
FRANS HALS (ANTWERP 1582/3-1666 HAARLEM)
Portrait of a gentleman of the de Wolff family, possibly Joost de Wolff (1576/7-?after 1652), half-length
EstimateGBP 4,000,000 - 6,000,000![]()
JAN LIEVENS (LEIDEN 1607-1674 AMSTERDAM)
A man holding a woman in partial undress
EstimateGBP 1,500,000 - 2,000,000![]()
GEORGE STUBBS, A.R.A. (LIVERPOOL 1724-1806 LONDON)
Mares and Foals in an extensive landscape
EstimateGBP 7,000,000 - 10,000,000![]()
The Rialto, Venice
EstimateGBP 2,500,000 - 3,500,000
RICHARD PARKES BONINGTON (ARNOLD 1802-1828 LONDON)
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