to be perfectly honest, i'm not a great fan of titian. this sounds like an obstinately philistine statement to make, but obviously i'm neither speaking as an art historian nor as an artist. nor in fact as an expert of any description. i'm not giving you my assessment of the quality of titian's work, i'm just telling you where he fits into my personal taste. and the answer is hardly at all.
so if it were purely a question of whether i like these paintings or not, i'd see very little reason for getting in the least bit interested in the case of the two titians. but of course it has nothing to do with personal taste (least of all my personal taste) and everything to do with civilisation.
if you haven't been following the case of the two titians, it's remarkably simple: the duke of sutherland, his name is francis ronald egerton, owns two famous paintings by the italian renaissance master titian. the paintings are called diana and actaeon and diana and callisto, and they form part of the 'bridgewater' collection which has been with the national galleries of scotland for just under sixty years. so far so good.
diana and callisto
diana and actaeonnow, for reasons of his own, the duke as decided he wants to sell these two paintings. on the open market, it is estimated, they are worth a cool £150m. each. £300m in total. he'll let the national galleries of scotland and the national gallery (london) jointly have them both for £100m: fifty million a throw. but the galleries have to raise the first fifty million by new year's eve (about four months after the offer) and the second within another four years.
and this is where it gets fascinating. how are these two galleries going to raise a hundred million pounds for two pictures that the vast majority of people have probably never heard about until now. (the highest sum the national gallery has so far paid for the acquisition of a painting is £22m, back in 2004.) the consensus in the art world, not surprisingly, is that if the two paintings should end up being sold on the open market they would almost certainly be lost to the nation, which would constitute a major catastrophe. outside the art world, opinions vary a great deal and what pops up regularly in debates of this nature has predictably popped up here too: the 'how many hospitals' argument.
it's not so much of an argument as a price comparison that goes along the lines: how many hospitals could you build for (in this case) a hundred million, implying that this would be a far better use of the money. (this is often then accompanied by the number of premier league footballers you could have for the same amount, though this largely for entertainment value: i've never heard anybody seriously suggest that public funds be spent to purchase premier league footballers for the nation, though who knows that may not be such a terrible idea either...) the answer, as it happens, is about 3 (and 30 respectively), though obviously that depends largely on the nature, size and location of the hospitals you want (and the current career status of your preferred footballers).
and of course the argument doesn't hold, because it really isn't one, certainly not for a country that ranks among the wealthiest in the world. if you are a household with a reasonable income you do not say to yourself, every time you go to the cinema or the theatre or buy a book or, most particularly, if and when you buy a painting to hang on the wall: ah but think how many aspirins that would pay for. you certainly don't look at the heirloom (if you're privileged enough to have one) and work out how many days in physio it would pay for. not unless you're seriously ill and really have absolutely no other sources of funding.
if we were an impoverished nation on the brink of collapse with people dying for want of health provision and a large segment of the population illiterate, we would be looking at a different proposition. but we're not. we're a highly evolved sophisticated society that knows - even if sometimes it pretends that it doesn't - the value of heritage, art and culture. and here is the opportunity - you could call it the imposed necessity - to buy, for the nation, two works which practically everybody in the know agrees are in actual fact priceless: the colours titian used, the composition, the artistry, the allegorical references, even the history of their commission make them, as a pair, unique: they are a treasure.
a nation needs treasures. and in this country - and this is something we can and should be extremely proud of and happy about - these treasures are freely accessible to all. you don't pay any admission, you don't have to belong to a club, you don't have to book. you just walk into any museum and enjoy them. so really: £100 million is a snip. it's about one fifty a head of the population. less than a cappuccino. about the price of a simple burger (if you're that way inclined). for something that, if you allow it to, can do you more good than a lifetime supply of prozac. art is good you: it nurtures the mind and nourishes the soul. falling in love with a painting is like, well, falling in love. it releases endorphins in your body and makes you feel good. feeling good heals. never underestimate the power of art.
i'm not about to suggest that we should do away with hospitals altogether and simply rely on art for our healthcare but everybody knows that money spent on prevention goes a whole lot further than money spent on cure. and taking care of our national treasures helps us take care of ourselves. it's the bigger picture we're after: how things fit together in a civilised world.
so i say: yes go ahead and spend the money. buy these paintings, take it from the taxes. it'll be money well spent.
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