Portrait of an unknown lady, said to be Titian's mistress

For generations this woman was known only as Titian's mistress, a romantic label with no evidence behind it, and the picture itself was written off as the work of a follower. Conservation at Apsley House in 2015 changed both ideas. Cleaning brought back the quality of the paint and pointed to Titian himself, or his Venice studio, working around 1550. X-rays found something stranger underneath, an earlier half-dressed figure reaching up to pull a veil from her hair, her pose entirely different. The canvas reached London by an odd route, among the pictures seized from Joseph Bonaparte's baggage train after the Battle of Vitoria in 1813 and later kept by the Duke of Wellington.