Titian masterpiece to be saved as campaign nears £50m target

Published on Sunday 14 December 2008 00:29

A RENAISSANCE masterpiece is set to be saved for the nation after a series of pledges put the fundraising campaign in touching distance of achieving the £50m asking price.

With the credit crunch biting, there were fears the campaign would fail and that Titian's Diana And Actaeon would leave the country.

But the Scottish Government will this week announce that it will donate about 10m, while the National Gallery in London will pledge about 12m and the National Galleries of Scotland a further 2m to secure the future of the work.

Money will also come from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Until now, 11m had been publicly pledged. Another 8m is coming from private donors.

This weekend sources close to the campaign said they were confident that the 50m total would be reached before the December 31 deadline.

The Titian and its companion piece, Diana And Callisto, belong to the seventh Duke of Sutherland and form part of his Bridgewater collection, which has been on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland since 1945.

If the galleries secure Diana And Actaeon, they will have a further four years to buy the sister work.

Once saved, Diana And Actaeon, which is regarded as one of the finest Renaissance works in private hands, will be shared by the national galleries in Edinburgh and London, with each taking it for five years at a time.

Sir Timothy Clifford, former director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: "I'm absolutely thrilled by this news."

Outspoken artists including Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Lucien Freud have petitioned 10 Downing Street to secure the future of the work. It is also believed that multi-millionaire artists such as Hirst may have put money into the campaign.

More than 60 renowned artists including Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Sir Peter Blake, Antony Gormley and Paula Rego pledged their support to the campaign, writing in a joint statement: "We applaud the partnership formed by the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery in London in an effort to acquire the two pictures.

"The high reputation being enjoyed currently by British art, both at home and abroad, depends on the extraordinary quality and depth of our national collections, which have always been, and remain, a constant stimulus to contemporary artists working across a whole variety of creative disciplines."

Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery in London, said they were deeply grateful for the donation from the Art Fund, which helped to acquire paintings by Titian, including The Vendramin Family Venerating A Relic Of the True Cross for the National Gallery in 1929, on five previous occasions.

Penny said: "Fear that these supreme masterpieces by Titian might leave these shores was a major factor in the foundation of the Art Fund and it is highly appropriate that the fund was the first to support our campaign to acquire them. We are deeply grateful."

Fears had been expressed that the recession could hinder the appeal.