The Titian position

This from the BBC:

A 450-year-old Madonna and Child work by Titian has sold for $16.9m (£10.7m) in New York, setting a new auction record for the Renaissance master.

A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria was sold at Sotheby's to a European telephone bidder.

It beat the previous Titian auction record of £7.5m ($11.9m) paid at Christie's in London in December 1991.

Ring any bells? I reported back in August 2008 that The Duke of Sutherland had offered the nation a pair of Titians. The first would be £50 million and if we bought that we could have the other for another £50m. Apparently we have raised the money for the first and are now saving up for the second. I hadn't realised that this was nearly seven times the highest price then paid for a Titian and even now nearly five times the highest price. In fact, looking back through the newspaper archives, nothing was said about that at all.

The Duke of Sutherland said they would fetch five times his price at auction (although he would, wouldn't he?), that is to say they would each fetch 33 times the highest price ever paid for that artist.

Now, I am no art market expert, but my rat odour detector is beginning to flash.

And what is all this 'saved for the nation' stuff? The picture (both, if we can afford them) will be on display in Edinburgh and as I said at the time it would cost someone in, say, Wales, no less to see them than if they were in the Guggenheim in New York.

So who accepted this £50m figure?

That smell? A rat, surely? A perceptible rat.