London tattles on Getty’s outlay

The J. Paul Getty Museum does not disclose prices of artworks purchased in private transactions, but that doesn’t stop outsiders from guessing.

In the case of Titian’s “Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto,” a Venetian Renaissance masterpiece acquired in November, sources then estimated the painting’s market value at $50 million, but that figure may have been far too conservative.

London’s Daily Telegraph reported last week that the Getty actually paid $70 million for the painting, which museum director Deborah Gribbon judges the greatest portrait in the Getty’s collection.

If the report was accurate, the Titian is also the second most expensive Old Master painting ever sold, topped only by Rubens’ “The Massacre of the Innocents,” sold to Lord Thomson of Fleet for $76.7 million at a 2002 auction.

The Getty bought the Titian from the Axa Insurance Group, a French company that purchased the painting from a French family in 1990 and lent it to the Louvre for 12 years.

The Louvre had an option to buy the painting but declined. The reason isn’t clear, but art experts chalk it up to a change in administration and the fact that the museum already had a large holding of Titians.

-- Suzanne Muchnic