IN A LAST MINUTE COUP - London's National Gallery have gained a masterpiece for the nation. The NG could never have offered to purchase the painting from the heirs of Sir John Gooch outright - given their measly annual budget of under £1.8 million for new acquisitions. Instead, Neil MacGregor, the inspired Director of the NG and resident expert Dr. Dillian Gordon lobbied the government to agree to a swap - the Cimabue would stay in the UK and go to the National collection for the public to enjoy if a substantial sum would be deducted from the inheritance tax bill that was strangling the Gooch family. 

The painting had been entered in a Sotheby's sale scheduled for 6th July 2000 in London with the family hoping to raise money enough to cover their death tax bill. The only trouble was, as Mr MacGregor clearly foresaw - that in such cases the national treasure is usually knocked down to a foreign bidder, packed up and shipped to a distant country. In the past, when a work of art is deemed of irreplaceable importance like the Cimabue or  Canova's 'Three Graces' now in the V & A Museum, the government are cajoled by desperate curators and gallery directors into either raising money for a pre-auction purchase or accepting the work of art in lieu of taxes.
In the case of the Cimabue - the last painting by  this rare artist that will ever have been owned by private hands - a deal was finally struck on the 29th June, 2000 and the painting was instantly withdrawn from the Sotheby's sale - no doubt disappointing a gaggle of overseas collectors who had their eye on this rarest of objects - one of only seven panels in the world believed to be by the artist. Art History views Cimabue as the father of western painting, pre-dating the more famous Giotto.
The connoisseur and philanthropist Sir Paul Getty has also stepped into the rescue and will pay the Gooch family £700,000 to make up for the balance of the accepted value - a sum much less than they might have obtained had the painting gone to auction. It is always a gamble when you auction a work of art but Alexander Bell of Sotheby's said that a figure close to £10 million was not out of the question considering the amount of interest the painting had provoked on the international market. In which case, the Gooch heirs are to be commended for their acceptance of the pre-auction compromise. Their tax bill is paid, but they only end up with £700,000 in cash - when a possible £5 million was beckoning.