The painting “Ecce Homo” by Titian will be exhibited on Thursday, for the first time, at the Municipal Museum in Iasi

“The exhibition brings to Iasi for the first time one of the most important masterpieces of European art in Romania, being the most valuable work ever exhibited in the capital of Moldova. The work Ecce Homo or Behold the Man! Made in 1560 by the great Italian artist Tiziano Vecellio or Tițian (1488/90-1576) it will be exhibited in Iasi. The work is part of the collection of the Brukenthal National Museum, the only institution in Romania and Eastern Europe that has a work by Titian in its collection. (…) In the work Ecce Homo Titian exploits a rare theme in Italian painting of the 16th century, having been commissioned for the first time in 1543. The Brukenthal National Museum’s work is similar to the 1548 version in the Prado Museum in Madrid, to the version in 1560 in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and the one from 1564-1566 in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. There is also an unfinished work from the Ecce Homo series by Titian at the Art Gallery in Saint Louis Missouri, United States of America,” the press release states.

.The provenance of Titian’s “Ecce Homo” painting in the Brukenthal collection could be traced back to Titian’s workshop.

“Over the more than 450 years since it was created, the painting has passed through the following locations, collectors and events: Venice, most likely in the home of sculptor and collector Allesandro Vittoria (sometime after 1560/1565 to 1608) and in the art cabinet of the rich merchant Bartolomeo della Nave (1608-1638); England, where it was shipped from Venice until May 1638; London, the Chelsea mansion of James, 3rd Marquess and 1st Duke of Hamilton (1639-1649), which was the former royal residence of King Henry VIII of England and the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth I; Holland, sent there after Hamilton’s execution on March 9, 1649; Brussels, gallery of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm housed in Coudenberg Palace (c. 1650/ 1651-1656); integrated into the world’s first catalog of an art collection, made by David Teniers ÎI in 1660; Vienna, exhibited in the Stallburg gallery (1659-c. 1773/ 1776); sent by Brukenthal from Vienna to Sibiu between 1774-1777; housed in Sibiu – the capital of Transylvania province, in the private Brukenthal gallery (since 1783, on the second floor of the building facing the street), with an interruption of several years during the First World War, when it was sent for safekeeping to Vienna, then in Budapest (winter 1914/1915-June 1919); restored in Sibiu or Vienna (?), when it was probably shortened at the bottom to about half of Christ’s right palm (1899); stolen from the museum in 1968 and found 30 years later in 1998 in the USA; finally returned home in 1998 to the European Art Gallery of the Brukenthal National Museum, being registered with a new inventory number,” according to the Brukenthal National Museum.