The Getty has “pulled off one of the most spectacular Old Master painting purchases in history. Titian’s magnificent Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos is now hanging in the Californian museum. Yet until recently the portrait was on show at the Louvre in Paris, which had hoped to add it to its permanent collection. The French museum, not renowned for letting important pictures slip through its fingers, had the opportunity to buy the Titian at a preferential rate but decided not to do so.” The Getty paid $70 million, making the Titian the second-most expensive Old Master in history.