Maria mit Kind und dem heiligen Paulus

Titian painted this intimate Virgin and Child around 1540, at the height of his fame in Venice, with Saint Paul leaning in at the edge, his sword in hand. The later life of the picture is the surprising part. It dropped out of sight for generations and quietly outlasted the communist decades hanging in a family home in Pécs, in southern Hungary. It surfaced at a Budapest auction in 1995, was studied and confirmed as a genuine Titian, and changed hands more than once. In 2015 Hungary's national bank bought it for about 15.8 million dollars and placed it in the Museum of Fine Arts, where anyone can now stand in front of it.