Last week’s sale of a Francis Bacon’s Studies for a Portrait of Lucian Freud for £23m unleashed a new round of speculation about the buyer. Some reports latched on to Roman Abramovitch for no discernable reason save previous reports that Oligarch had bought the record-setting Bacon of some years ago.

Colin Gleadell claims the buyer is Pyotr Aven, president of Alfa Bank. But the real mystery is why it took an auction to sell the work when it had been previously shopped by both Gagosian and Haunch of Venison, as Gleadell points out, at a lower price of around £15 million.

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