LOS T MA S T E R P I ECE DI SCOVERED IN CHURCH
Herefordshire based art historian and conservator Ronald Moore first spotted The Last Supper painting several years ago when he was called to the St Michael and All Saints Church in Ledbury to work on another painting.
He spotted this latest Titian discovery on the wall of the church, which had been donated to the church more than 100 years earlier. “I’d been asked to work on another painting at the church,” he explained.
“I was also asked to look at this large painting which was extremely dirty and had been damaged from a previous restoration job.
“At the time I thought it was Titian but members of the church felt it was just a copy. I could tell it was 16th century though and was really interested to look at it more closely.”
The painting was originally purchased in 1775 by John Skippe who lived at Upper Hall in Ledbury and when he unsuccessfully tried to sell it on at a huge profit, it hung there for many years before being donated to the church in 1909, presumed to be a copy.
“Skippe was a rich but amateur collector and enthusiastic and competent artist in his own right. He probably bought the painting from a monastery on his Grand Tour but couldn’t sell it and probably didn’t really know its true provenance.”
The call to work on the now famous painting didn’t come for another 10 years and so keen to work on the painting, Mr Moore offered a much lower quote for his services to secure the contract. Little did he know then that the work and research on the painting would become such a labour of love and between himself and his research assistant Patricia Kennedy, he estimates they have spent around 11,000 hours of painstaking research to determine its provenance. There were two major breakthroughs in authenticating the painting.
Mr Moore discovered a note from Skippe stating that he had purchased a Last Supper signed and dated by Titian. Initially during restoration no signature was seen.
Eventually the signature was discovered on a jug in the painting, where Titian had signed another similar work, and after being photographed, the signature could be seen under ultraviolet light using a new technique Mr Moore’s researcher pioneered.
Although the great Renaissance painter Titian most certainly had a hand in the magnificent painting, which measures an impressive 12 feet wide, it is thought the majority of work on the painting was actually completed by the great man’s workshop painters, many of whom were his sons and nephews, as was commonplace at the time.
Mr Moore said the picture was commissioned by a Venetian convent decades before it was completed in 1576, the year Titian died.
"He was a very popular and busy artist and I think he just never got time to work on it and finish it," he said.
"When Titian died, the plague was around and a lot of people were dying and I think that perhaps influenced his son to turn the painting into a family portrait."
Ronald has uncovered evidence that the painting took 20 years to complete and certainly includes the brushwork of five or six excellent painters, alongside some other less accomplished ones. “The discovery of this painting was extremely important art historically. It is the only large scale, Titian workshop piece of work that was until now undiscovered.”
So detailed and painstaking has his research been, he has now published a book dedicated to the painting entitled Titian’s Lost Last Supper – by Unicorn, available from Amazon, price £20.
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ENTERTAINMENT LOS T MAS T ERPI ECE
Picture courtesy of Ronald Moore
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