A painting by Pablo Picasso which is considered to be a Spanish national treasure has been found on a yacht linked to a billionaire scion of the Botín banking family in Corsica, just months after a court in Madrid upheld an earlier decision to block a sale overseas.
The Head of a Young Woman is said to be worth about €25m (£17.6m) and was seized in Calvi by French customs officers who said that the painting was on its way to Switzerland. They intervened last week after the work “drew the attention of French officials”. They had been tipped off that the painting was on the island.
The boat, the Adix, and the painting belong to Jaime Botín, whose family turned the Spanish bank Santander into one of the best-known names on the UK high street.
Jaime Botín, who has an estimated £1.2bn fortune, bought the Picasso painting in London in 1977 (EPA)
In May, a Spanish appeals court upheld a decision from 2013 which had banned the sale of the Head of a Young Woman overseas. Mr Botín, who was not on the Adix when it was boarded by French officials last week, had kept the masterpiece on the boat in Valencia, and had hoped to move it to London for an auction at Christie’s.
The Adix, a 64-metre, three-mast super yacht, had recently undergone an extensive refit and was sailing under a Union flag. The boat had been taken to Mahon in Menorca in June, before sailing on to the French island last month.
The yacht Adix sails off Testa beach in Pianottoli Caldarello, Corsica, on Tuesday (Getty)
According to French police, the captain of the Adix “was only able to show an evaluation document pertaining to the work, as well as a report written in Spanish from May 2015 by the Spanish High Court, confirming that it was a Spanish national treasure that could not be taken out of Spain under any circumstances”. In May, the appeals court threw out Mr Botín’s application to take the painting out of Spain, backing the Spanish culture ministry, which in July 2013 had blocked the export on the grounds that the Head of a Young Woman was an important piece of Spanish heritage, and that there was “no other similar work on Spanish soil”.
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Mr Botín has not been charged with any offence relating to the seizure of the painting. The Adix left port in Calvi on Friday and, according to tracking websites, is now anchored in a cove in the south of Corsica. It is not known why Mr Botín wants to sell the painting.
The 79-year-old was the brother of Emilio Botín, the former chairman of Santander who died last year and who was credited with turning the bank from a regional outfit into one of the world’s biggest financial institutions. The current head of Santander, Ana Botín, who previously ran the bank’s UK arm, is Jaime Botín’s niece.
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The Head of a Young Woman was completed by Malaga-born Picasso in 1906. It is believed that Mr Botín bought the work in 1977 at the Marlborough Fine Art Fair in London and that it has been part of his private collection since. Worth an estimated $1.8bn (£1.2bn) and Spain’s 15th richest man according to Forbes, Mr Botín was once the vice-president of Santander and is the largest shareholder in Bankinter, another large Spanish bank.
The work itself is a rare example of Picasso’s work from his Gósol period in the early 1900s.
Several owners of the expressionist’s work have recently cashed in on rising prices and in May, the artist’s Les femmes d’Alger (Version O) broke the world record for a painting sold at auction when it fetched $179m (£114m) at Christie’s in New York. After opening the bidding at $100m (£64m), the auctioneer closed the sale in just 11 minutes.
