JAYNIE ANDERSON, LARRY KEITH, IRMA ARTEMIEVA E.A.
The incredible history of A Lady and her Daughter by Titian In the early 1550s, Titian made a portrait of A Lady and her Daughter, which he left unfinished. Soon after the masters death in 1576, Titians black-sheep son, Pomponio, had the scene of the mother and her daughter painted over, turning it into Tobias and the Angel: a religious subject was more likely to sell than a portrait of two anonymous sitters. In 1581, Pomponio sold off his fathers studio, including the newly overpainted canvas, to Cristoforo Barbarigo. The picture remained in Barbarigos famous collection in the Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza on the Canal Grande until 1850 when it was acquired by Tsar Nicholas I, together with a number of other pictures by Titian. Large parts of the Tsars collection were sold and dispersed soon afterwards, including Tobias and the Angel. In the 1920s, the painting was acquired by the French art dealer René Gimpel. Just before the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, Gimpel brought his collection to safety in London, storing it in a garage in Bayswater without informing anyone about its exact loc