UK Galleries Seek $165 Million For Two Key Titians

The galleries would then have three more years to pay off the promised cash.

The National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery in London are seeking to raise 100 million pounds ($165 million) to buy two key works by Renaissance master Titian before they are put up for sale.

"Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Callisto" belong to the Duke of Sutherland, who wants to sell them.

At 50 million pounds each, experts say the galleries are being offered a rare bargain, although the owner would benefit from significant tax breaks if they are acquired by the nation.

Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, said he was hopeful of raising the money needed for "Diana and Actaeon" before the deadline at the end of 2008.

The galleries would then have three more years to pay off the promised cash.

But the financial crisis was affecting the campaign.

"It's a very difficult time," he told Reuters at the National Gallery in London, where "Diana and Actaeon" is on temporary display next to "Death of Actaeon", another work in the Titian series acquired by the museum after an earlier nationwide appeal in 1972.

If the campaign is successful, the galleries will have the opportunity to acquire "Diana and Callisto" for another 50 million pounds, money which has to be secured by 2012.

"If he (the Duke of Sutherland) were to sell them, it would be a huge loss to the National Galleries of Scotland's collection," Penny said.

"We have worked out a deal whereby he offered these paintings at an extremely advantageous rate, way below their market value."

The National Gallery calls the two Titians "the greatest Renaissance pictures left in private hands". In 2002, Peter Paul Rubens' "The Massacre of the Innocents" fetched 49.5 million pounds in an auction record for an old master painting.

Titian's grand canvases, painted between 1556 and 1559, were part of a series of six mythology paintings produced for King Philip II of Spain.