Bid to save Madonna

Nov 9 2002 By Dave Black, The Journal

Art experts are seeking lottery funding in a bid to save a Raphael masterpiece which the Duke of Northumberland plans to sell to an American buyer for £35m.

The National Gallery has submitted an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant to help it buy the 500-year-old painting.

Gallery officials said yesterday they have made a `substantial' bid for lottery cash to help raise the funds required to match the offer the duke has accepted from the John Paul Getty Museum.

Next week they also plan to launch a national public appeal for financial support to keep Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks at the National Gallery where it has been on loan for the past decade.

Controversy erupted last week after it was revealed that the duke - one of Britain's richest landowners with an estimated £250m fortune - had agreed to sell the painting to the Getty Museum.

He says the sale is necessary to raise money to help with the upkeep of Alnwick Castle, its important landscape and his extensive art collection.

The painting used to hang on a wall at Alnwick Castle and was only identified as a Raphael original by a National Gallery curator during a visit 10 years ago.

Last weekend top officials at the Gallery criticised the way the duke has handled the proposed sale of the painting, claiming they should have been given earlier warning of its potential loss to America.

Yesterday National Gallery spokeswoman Cathy Hinde said: "We have made an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a grant to help us buy the painting.

"We will also be launching an appeal to help raise the required funds very soon and that is a very rare move for us.

"We want to save this painting for the UK and there has been a positive feedback from people to the idea of buying it, although some others have said it is a free market."

The duke has said he would happily sell the painting to a British institution if he receives an offer to match that from the Getty Museum.

Yesterday his spokesman Philip Gregory said: "We have not received any other offers for the painting but we hope the National Gallery can match the offer from the Getty Trust."