Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1488/90 – 1576), was one of the most extraordinary Venetian painters of the sixteenth century. He trained under the renowned Venetian artists Gentile Bellini (active 1459 – 1516) and Bellini’s pupil Giorgione (1477/78 – 1510), learning to prioritise colorito (colour) over the Florentine disegno (design or drawing), and painting with lively brushstrokes that later influenced diverse artists including Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velázquez, and the French Impressionists. In the final years of his life, Titian’s style transitioned into his late phase, and he embraced a muted, narrower colour palette and increasingly sketchy brushwork. Over the course of his career, Titian employed this characteristically Venetian artistic language to paint altarpieces, mythologies, portraits, and pastoral landscapes.
Titian is sometimes called the first Venetian painter to become famous in Europe during his lifetime, and he was granted commissions from patrons outside of Venice from the 1530s onwards. At the height of his fame, Philip II of Spain commissioned a cycle of poesie (mythological scenes) after being introduced to Titian through his father Holy Roman Emperor King Charles V, also a patron of the artist. In the modern era, his works attract eager bidders at auction and achieve impressive prices in private sales. It is worth considering the evolution of Titian’s market over time, and the factors that determine the difference between a painting that sells for several million pounds and one that fails to find a buyer. To begin, we consider his historic market, looking at the top 10 auction prices.
Top 10 auction prices achieved for works by Titian (including premium):
1. Titian, The rest on the Flight into Egypt, sold Christie’s, London, 2 July 2024, lot 8, £17.56 million (£22.26m)
2. Titian, A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1560, sold Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2011, lot 156, $16.88 million.
3. Titian and Workshop, Venus and Adonis, sold Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 2022, lot 6, £11.16 million ($13.61m)
4. Titian and Workshop, Venus and Adonis [another version], sold Christie’s, London, 13 December 1991, lot 85, £7.48 million ($13.6m)
5. Titian, The Penitent Magdalene, sold Dorotheum, Vienna, 11 May 2022, lot 32, 4.82 million EUR ($5.08m)
6. Titian, The Penitent Magdalene [another version], sold Sotheby’s, New York, 24 January 2008, lot 117, $4.52 million
7. Titian and Workshop, Portrait of Two boys, said to be from the Pesaro family, sold Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 2016, lot 11, £2.11 million ($2.66m)
8 Titian, The Penitent Magdalene (same picture as no. 6), sold Sotheby’s, New York, 2 June 1989, lot 47, $2.64 million.
9. Titian and Studio, The Agony in the Garden, sold Christie’s, New York, 29 October 2019, lot 712, $2.42 million
10. Titian, St. Margaret, sold Sotheby’s, New York, 1 February 2018, lot 27, $2.18m
On 2 July, Christie’s presented Titian’s The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1510) as the star lot in the London Old Masters evening sale. The painting’s provenance, including its time in the collection of Austrian Emperor Joseph and display at Belvedere Palace, its looting by Napoleon in 1809 for his museum, and its 2002 rediscovery in a carrier bag at a bus stop after a theft at Longleat House in 1995, have undoubtedly added to its appeal. The artwork’s absence from the market for 150 years, since its sale at Christie’s in 1878 to the 4th Marquess of Bath, has only heightened its public intrigue. Andrew Fletcher, Christie’s Global Head of Old Masters, 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.’ The painting, offered by Lord Bath and Longleat Trustees, was estimated at £15-£25 million, yet it sold on the reserve to the guarantor, a private collector, for £15 million (£17.56 million including premium), without competition.
Why did the painting not realise a higher price? Despite the desirability and rarity of early works by Titian – painted, in many instances, before the establishment of a large and active studio, and thus making it easier for expertise to identify the hand of the master without assistance – the work was acknowledged to have suffered over the centuries, and its compromised condition ruled it out as a prospect for museums, for whom condition is paramount. (In contrast, for instance, we can look at the Metsys Madonna of the Cherries in the same sale, which was in superb condition; estimated at £8-£12 million, it was sold to the Getty for £9 million (£10.66 million including premium, a new auction record for the artist) following a lively battle between three determined bidders).
Titian, The rest on the Flight into Egypt, sold Christie’s, London, 2 July 2024, lot 8, £17.56 million (£22.26m)
When works from Titian’s maturity are offered for sale, there are always considerations of the degree of workshop involvement, particularly in large-scale pieces and compositions that exist in numerous variants. In December 2022, Sotheby’s offered a version of the Venus and Adonis, a composition known from the celebrated series of poesie painted for Philip II. Numerous relevant scholars were consulted, and the work was catalogued as Titian and Workshop. This is, of course, a broad designation that can encompass everything from a work largely by Titian with some studio assistance to the background passages, to a studio work with final touches by the master. There are numerous variants of the subject, including what is considered the prime version – the Prado picture – and a version of high quality acquired by the Getty Museum in the 1980s. This further muddies the waters, leading to questions of where, in the chronology of variants, the Sotheby’s picture belonged. And, finally, by the time the painting appeared at auction, it had been on the private market for several years and had been offered widely – at a much higher price, according to the wishes of the consigner – thus over-exposing the piece. Despite the painting’s stellar provenance and the intriguing suggestion, first mooted by Dickinson, that this may have been the original version painted for Philip II but rejected by the monarch on account of the prominent fold, or canvas join, running horizontally across the composition (an objection recorded in contemporary accounts, and we see no such seam in the Prado picture) the painting sold to its guarantor for the reserve price (£11.16 including premium). The horizontal line may have been interesting from a scholarly perspective, but it was visually distracting, and we know it to have dissuaded numerous private individuals.
Although bidders – particularly private, rather than museum, ones – are often prepared to accept a degree of uncertainty about attribution or a condition that is compromised to some degree, particularly if the image is an appealing one, the auction estimate muse reflect these. In 2017, Sotheby’s offered a Portrait of a Venetian Admiral, possibly Francesco Duomo, which the house catalogued as Titian in full, at an estimate of £1 to £1.5 million. This painting was not included in all the recent scholarship due to its relative lack of access, and the condition was far from perfect, but the estimate was still high, and the work went unsold. It would be interesting to observe how many other artworks met a similar fate, but, thanks to the relatively new auction practice of withdrawing high profile pieces that are relatively short of interest before the sale, we now see fewer BIs and failures are thus erased from public record.
Titian, Portrait of a Venetian Admiral, possibly Francesco Duomo, offered Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 2017
By comparison, top prices for other Venetian artists with whom he is often grouped are somewhat lower: The auction record for Tintoretto is £1.61 million/$3.17 million (for the Portrait of an elderly bearded man, sold Sotheby’s, London, 9 July 2008, lot 71) for a work that was originally estimated at £200,000-300,000, and the auction record for Veronese is $2.97 million (for Cupid Disarmed by Venus, sold Christie’s, New York, 10 January 1990, lot 230) for a work that carries an estimate of $800,000-1.2 million. These two prices, roughly on par with one another, are lower than the top five auction prices for works by Titian but higher than the subsequent Titian auction prices.
It is worth noting that the top auction prices for an artist like Titian are not the same as top prices achieved for examples of his work. While auctions, and auction prices, are public, private sales are not, and a gallery like Dickinson – which has handled numerous examples by Titian over the decades – does not publish sale prices (nor, in some instances, even details about the artwork itself). On rare occasions, however, information about a private sale becomes public if there is a fundraising effort required to save a painting for the nation and prevent its export. The most notable recent example for Titian is the 2009 joint acquisition, between The National Gallery and The National Gallery of Scotland, of the so-called Bridgewater Titians, paintings of Diana and Acteon and Diana and Callisto from the original series of poesie. Although the purchase price of £95 million (£50 million for the former and £45 million for the latter) is more than three times the auction record for any single painting, it is nowhere near what they would have realised on the open market; experts estimated their commercial value at somewhere in the region of £300 million for the pair.
Titian, Diana and Callisto, The National Gallery and The National Gallery of Scotland, London and Edinburgh
To a certain extent, artists like Titian will always be relatively famous within old master circles, but museum exhibitions can help raise the profile of an artist and lead to higher prices on the market, and Titian has been the focus of numerous recent blockbuster exhibitions. Artists are also often celebrated on significant anniversaries, and the considerable number of recent Titian exhibitions coincided, or very nearly so, with the 450th anniversary of his death in 2021.
Looking ahead, the market for Titian’s paintings is poised to remain strong and potentially grow driven by a combination of historical importance, rarity, and ongoing fame. As galleries and auction houses continue highlighting Titian’s works, his visibility and desirability will remain strong. This visibility can lead to further appreciation in value, especially for works with exceptional provenance and condition. Titian’s works will likely continue to achieve record prices at auction, reaffirming his position as one of the most valued artists in the history of Western art.