Gallery unveils its newest, nearest and dearest

THE National Gallery of Victoria revealed the most expensive acquisition in its 150-year history yesterday: a small, honey-and-jewel-toned religious painting by Italian High Renaissance painter Antonio Allegri da Correggio.
Its $5.2 million price tag was paid for by a single benefactor, businessman Andrew Sisson.
NGV director Gerard Vaughan beamed with almost maternal pride at the revelation of Madonna and Child with the infant Saint John the Baptist, 1514-16, yesterday. When the work was listed for sale as the star of the Sotheby's July auction in London, there was media speculation it might be snapped up by the Getty Museum - Dr Vaughan said it was the first widely authenticated work by Correggio on the market for 50 years. ''It's possible there will never be another.''

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Businessman and National Gallery of Victoria trustee Andrew Sisson put up $5.2million for the Correggio painting on the day the sale of his company came through. Photo: Penny Stephens

Correggio is the ''fifth Beatle'' to contemporaries: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael. Works of the period are so desirable, with the great names represented in virtually all public collections, the work was expected to be highly sought after.
It had been in a private Swiss collection and unknown even to Correggio experts before its consignment, although its authenticity is beyond dispute.
The NGV's successful bid of £3.6 million made through an agent - Dr Vaughan slept through it, Mr Sisson stayed up and watched the auction live on the Sotheby's website - was enabled by the strong dollar as well as the pressure on European and American museum budgets and endowment returns due to tough economic conditions.
''We were in the right place at the right time with the right budget,'' Dr Vaughan said.
Mr Sisson, a gallery trustee, is best known as the fund manager who scuttled the 2009 Qantas takeover bid by the powerful Macquarie Bank consortium.
Yesterday's generous gift was funded by the sale of his investment company, Balanced Equity Management, which came through on the same day as the Sotheby's auction.
He said the Correggio's ''humanistic'' qualities - the tenderness of the Madonna's touch and expression - made him ''go weak at the knees''.
''Intellectual stimulation is all well and good, it's also got to be … beautiful.''
The work was put on public display on level one of the St Kilda Road gallery yesterday. It will disappear into conservation towards the end of the year - chiefly to remove old varnish that makes the colours too treacly and the volumes less pronounced - before going on display with the other 16th century works in mid-2012.

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