And now lot 403: the Old Master worth £5m. Do I hear £300?

The painting was just one among a motley selection up for auction in Market Harborough, Leicestershire. There was a sentimental picture of gambolling terriers ("English school, estimate £150-200"); cottagey views; harvest scenes; Scottish waterfalls: a rollcall of pastiches, non-entities and plain old fit-for-the-dustbin disasters.

And then there was lot 403. Described in the auctioneer's catalogue as "18th-century continental school, half-length portrait of an aesthete", it depicted a black-clad, bearded man, his face half turned to the right, a rather distant, soulful expression in his eyes.



The estimate on the picture was £300-£500. When its turn came last Tuesday at Gilding's - a small, family-run auction house that holds about 45 sales per year - something truly extraordinary happened. "The atmosphere in the room became very tense - the bidding just went on and on," said the auctioneer, Mark Gilding. The final hammer price was £205,000.

And, enormous as the figure may seem, that's just the start of it. The London fine art trade is now abuzz: this painting is very probably a Titian, painted in Venice between about 1510 and 1520. And as such, its real market value is likely to be upwards of £5m.



A mystery remains: who bought, or indeed sold, the painting? Simon Dickinson, one of the most distinguished Old Master dealers in the UK, said yesterday: "I wish I knew - I've been trying to find out. No one seems to know; I've rung round most people." Christopher Foley, a dealer, was also in the dark, despite the phone ringing off the hook. "That price suggests that two people knew what it was: one of them perhaps young and clever, with a budget of £200,000. And someone else." Mr Gilding will say only that the buyer was someone "in the London trade"; and that the vendor was a private individual, a woman living locally, who bought the painting from a contents sale in 1974 from a house in the village of Great Glen, Leicestershire.

What is not thought to be in doubt is the painting's quality. Though Mr Dickinson stressed he has studied only an emailed photograph, he said: "It looks very good. It looks like perfect early Titian ... the handling looks like early Titian, the way the shirt is painted, and the face. The ear looks a bit clumsy, as if it's been repainted. But it looks jolly good."

And its value? "It depends on the condition, but it could be worth a great deal. Quite a few million. Yes, perhaps around £5m."