It was a heart-stopping moment when the conservator Alice Tate-Harte gently cleaned off centuries of thick black paint and grime and uncovered square Roman letters spelling out the name TITIANUS. The reputation of the bare-breasted young woman in the painting was instantly transformed: she has turned out to be a genuine work by one of the most revered masters of European painting, not a much later imitation of his style.

“It was a once-in-a-career moment, and there was nobody else in the conservation studio to share it – I had to ring my husband to have somebody to tell,” she recalled.