Danaë

For most of its time in London this picture was catalogued as a copy, made by a follower after Titian died. It hung away from visitors in the private rooms of Apsley House until cleaning and conservation work in the 2010s took off layers of overpaint and dirt, and English Heritage put it back under the name of Titian and his studio, dating it to about 1553. That is the moment Titian was sending mythological paintings to Philip II of Spain, and specialists still disagree about whether this canvas or the Danae in the Prado is the one the prince received. How it reached a house at Hyde Park Corner is easier to answer. After the Battle of Vitoria in 1813, Wellington's army took Joseph Bonaparte's baggage train, which held pictures rolled up out of the Spanish royal collection, and Ferdinand VII afterwards told Wellington to keep them.