For the past 100-odd years, a vast, gloomy, rather murky-looking painting of The Last Supper has loomed above the altar at St Michael & All Angels church in Ledbury, Herefordshire.
It is 12½ft wide, 8 ft tall and was hung so high on the wall that, even if the paintwork hadn t been obscured by layers of cheap varnish and centuries of dirt, the church s 100-strong congregation would never have been able to make out its finer points.
That s why nobody had noticed the exquisite brushwork on some of the apostles not even the striking-looking chap on the left in his golden robes who bore an uncanny resemblance to the 16th-century Italian painter Titian.
UPDATE: Ledbury s lost Titian looks set to remain in church, as a major tourist attraction ledburyreporter.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ledburyreporter.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A HEREFORDSHIRE church could be home to a lost masterpiece, it has been claimed, after a signature was found on a painting undergoing restoration. After languishing for 200 years in Ledbury parish church, a gloomy painting on the north wall was hailed as a “lost” depiction of The Last Supper in 2018. And it could have been lost forever, rector at St Michael & All Angels, the Rev Keith Hilton-Turvey explained, as the picture had become “increasingly dark” over the years and some even believed the church “ought to get rid of it”. “It was thought to be of little value or merit, but some of the Friends of the church thought differently, he said.
Art: Painting of the Last Supper in a parish church in Herefordshire may be a lost work by Titian dailymail.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailymail.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.