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A tableau authenticated recently as being by Italian Renaissance artist Tiziano Vecellio, better known as Titian, sold for its reserve price of 360,000 euros (470,000 dollars) on Tuesday.
"For our auction house it is the most important and certainly one of the most important sales ever in Spain," Maribel Casillas, director of the Segre auction house had said ahead of the sale when "Portrait of a Woman" was first presented.
The owners had been unaware of its provenance when they had the previously unknown work valued last March. The work shows a young elegant woman of noble appearance with her head turned to the left and looking directly at the viewer.
"This is an unknown work by an exceptional master" from the Renaissance -- Titian lived from 1490 to 1576 - "in a well-preserved state," Casillas' colleague Alonso Moral told AFP when the tableau was presented last month in Madrid.
Experts believe Titian produced the work around 1549-1550, at "the peak of his career."
A careful study of Titian's oeuvre, including that of a portrait of Empress Isabelle of Portugal in 1548 which is on display at Madrid's Prado museum and shows striking similarities, permitted experts to draw the conclusion that the unknown work is also his.
According to Moral, "the painting belonged originally to a noble French family, probably the Princes of Conde," pointing to a fleur de lys seal on the work accompanied by the words "Etienne, chief of the royal treasury."
The work, rare in that only 15 of 117 known Titian portraits were of women, was acquired by an Andalusian aristocratic family until it was bought by the current owners in 1985, Moral revealed.
Titian generally produced canvasses of a religious or mythological nature and gained a reputation for brilliant expressive portraiture.
He is regarded as having been the "international artist par excellence" during the Renaissance and rulers of the age rushed to acquire his works.
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AFPEntertainment-Spain-Art-Titian
AFP 192002 GMT 12 06
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