Olympus in the Lounge

The Hendon Hall Hotel, in the sedate North London suburb of Hendon, is the last place in the world anyone would expect to find an Old Master. Potted palms adorn the glassed-in veranda; the lounge where guests gather for after-dinner coffee is a gloomily cozy room paneled in dark veneer. Few of the guests had ever noticed the painting on the low ceiling of the room.

Last January, however, the Hendon's manager decided that the ceiling picture needed a cleaning. Scraping away the murk, an art restorer exposed a finely detailed 6-ft.-by-4-ft. painting that swirled with gods, cherubs and figures symbolizing the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and America, "looks to me like a Tiepolo," said the expert. The manager was dubious, but many weeks later an architect lunching at Hendon Hall looked up at the ceiling. He recognized the picture as strikingly similar to Venetian Master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's painting of Olympus and the Four Continents in the Bishop's Palace at Wiirzburg, Germany.

The architect called in another expert, Alan Clutton-Brock, trustee of the National Gallery and art critic of the London Times. Clutton-Brock took a long look at the delicate brushwork of the creamy grey Olympian sky and warm browns, reds and blues of the four figure-filled landscapes, announced flatly that the work was by Tiepolo; the style was unmistakable, he said, and the picture was obviously a preliminary work for the painting in Wuerzburg.

How did a Tiepolo get to Hendon? After mulling it over, art historians gave an answer: the building, dating from 1652, was bought in 1756 as a residence by famed Actor-Manager David Garrick; Garrick traveled both to Wuerzburg, where he could have seen the bishop's painting, and to Venice, where he could have bought the painting from Tiepolo. Last week the Tiepolo changed hands again. Workmen delicately pried the gilt-framed canvas from the ceiling of the lounge. The purchaser: a London art dealer. Probable price: -L-10,000 ($28,000).

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