MA$TERPIECE

Stolen Titian Found at Bus Stop Sells for $22 million

The work's dramatic history includes being looted by Napoleon.

Titian’s Rest On The Flight Into Egypt smashed auction records when it was sold for $22 million at an auction—and a savvy art detective who recovered it in a plastic bag at a bus stop can take all the credit. The 16th century masterpiece, from one of Italy’s old masters, has exchanged hands a number of times through the centuries, at one point being looted by Napoleon Bonaparte during his occupation of Vienna in 1809, and then it was stolen again nearly two centuries later. The piece was taken from Lord Bath’s Longleat House collection in January 1995, when thieves scaled the side of the manor with a ladder and then smashed through a window to steal it, according to the Telegraph. At the time, the painting was worth $4.6 million, but finding a buyer of stolen goods made the task of selling nearly impossible, and thus, it sat in the hands of thieves for seven years, according to the Telegraph. Charles Hill, a Scotland Yard art detective tasked with the case of the stolen Titian, recovered the piece from a man sitting at a bus stop in London, who had it unframed and wrapped in plastic bags. The painting has since sold for $17m in 2011 and then $22m on Tuesday at a Christie’s auction.