Tim Cornwell: What price part-time national treasures THIS column is written from the Shetland Islands, where the kinds of cultural issues that get people going are the price and availability of children's music lessons, rather than whether a £45 million Renaissance masterpiece continues to hang in Edinburgh. When the grand announcement was made in London, that Titian's Diana and Callisto had been saved for the nation, the flight was just leaving from Glasgow, laden with musicians from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on a five-day tour. Viewed with a little rugged island scepticism, how does the purchase stand up? The Bridgewater Collection of 27 paintings, owned by the Dukes of Sutherland, has been hanging in the National Galleries of Scotland since 1945, after they were moved from London to Scotland for safety during the Second World War. This group of Old Masters transformed the Scottish national collection at a stroke. Holding on to them, in the words of the galleries" director general John Leighton, is about keeping its "triple AAA status." Without them, Moodys would have wrecked us. They include the famous Bridgewater Madonna, by Raphael, Rembrandt's self-portrait at 51, and Poussin's Seven Sacraments. Five pictures have now been bought for the nation since 1945. In early 2009, with the Duke of Sutherland looking to sell two historic Titians, arguably the greatest of the lot, the deal to buy Diana and Actaeon for £50m was announced after a fund-raising campaign. The Scottish Government put in £12.5m, the National Gallery in London the same amount, with £4.6m from the National Galleries of Scotland. The rest came from substantial donations and public foundation funding. It was to be a 50-50 split purchase between the two galleries, with the picture broadly to alternate every five years between London and Edinburgh. The deal, critically, also secured the future loan of the rest of the Bridgewater collection - for a limited time. Round two, this week: Diana and Callisto. A reduced £45m price (but the picture's condition and story line are not quite as attractive). The funds included £15m donations and grants from individual donors and trusts, and a staggering £25m from the National Gallery in London -nearly half its total reserves and including 67 bequests dating back a century. Just £1m from Scottish donors, it was reported. This inequality now means both paintings will now be shown together in a 60-40 split between London and Edinburgh, in a "display cycle" of six years in London and four years in Edinburgh. The 50-50 deal on Diana and Actaeon is subtly altered. Just how this split is reflected in their ownership, or the way the pictures are used as bargaining chips in possible loan deals with other galleries to bring other great paintings here - a vital benefit of supposed AAA status - is unclear. It's the price paid for the failure of Edinburgh to chip in seriously this time around. On the other hand, if Scotland hasn't kept the pictures it has kept a hefty share. There's no doubt the Titians are worth far more, whatever worth is. Qatar just bought a Cezanne favourite, The Card Players, for £160m in a private deal. By not pouring all available cash into the second painting, as they did with the first, the galleries here can also, hopefully, get back to some smaller shopping expeditions to address gaps in its collection. There are constant mutterings about modest pictures the galleries have missed or turned down; there was the lack of major commissions for the opening of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, for example. The wider Bridgewater Collection loan has now been secured - but just for the next 18 years, apparently. Francis Egerton, the current 7th Duke of Sutherland, was born in 1940. His heir apparent, according to Wikipedia, is James Egerton, Marquess of Stafford, born in 1975. How the next generation deals with the paintings will be one to watch. We should probably wish long life to the father, and wisdom to the son - or whatever the Shetland saying is.