There is a great difficulty in valuing the paintings at the National Gallery since many of them belong to private collections and are on permanent or long term loan and the NG does not include a list of notional values in its accounts.
While there are some very important works of art in the collection by Da Vinci, Constable, Raphael, Reubens, Van Gogh etc they are still valued at their acquisition price which means some of them may be way undervalued.
The best way to see the value of a painting is when an owner decides to put the painting up for sale.
In 2004 the National Gallery had to put together a funding cocktail of £35 million to keep hold of Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks but in September last year Titian's Portrait of a Young Man was put on sale on the open market by its owner the Earl of Halifax after the National Gallery and others failed to meet the valuation put on it by Christies of £65.5 million.
So I guess we just don't know until it comes to the crunch.
