Cream of the crop

Although small, last month's Christie's Old Master sale brimmed with treasures, such as paintings by Hals, Bonington and Titian, including his celebrated Rest on the Flight into Egypt

- Huon Mallalieu

THERE were only 24 lots in Christie’s principal London Old Master paintings session for the summer season. Inevitably, fewer and fewer great works are available to the market, but, nonetheless, these included a Titian, a Metsys, a Hals and a Bonington.

The 18¼in by 24¾in Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Fig 1) by Titian (1485/90–1576) has one of the most impressive provenances that would be possible to trace. The first known owner was Bartolomeo della Nave, a Venetian merchant and collector who was born at the end of the artist’s life, and from him, in 1638, it went to the 2nd Earl of Denbigh, then to the 1st Duke of Hamilton, who was executed by the Cromwellians in 1649, his collections sold. The Habsburg Governor of the Spanish Netherlands bought it in 1651—his inventory gives the size as ‘2 Span 7 Finger hoch vnd 3 Span 7 Finger braith’—and it then descended by way of several Holy Roman Emperors until looted on behalf of Napoleon in 1809. Briefly returned to the Habsburgs, it was bought by the Turner collector Munro of Novar in 1851 and then passed to the Marquesses of Bath, with one interruption, until this sale.