Scotland set to win tug of war over old master

The National Galleries of Scotland appeared to have won their tug of war with the Getty Museum in California for a 17th-century Italian masterpiece last night - but only just.

They had been given untilmidnight to raise pounds 2.04m to keep the Guercino, Erminia finding the wounded Tancred, in Britain. Last night they were pounds 43,000 short but it seemed likely they had come close enough to secure the purchase.

The galleries have had a nail-biting six months after it emerged in January that the Howard family, whose North Yorkshire seat is Castle Howard, had arranged to sell the painting to the Getty Museum for pounds 3.5m.

Timothy Clifford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland, began a campaign to keep the painting in Britain. He was supported by the Department of National Heritage, which agreed temporarily to refuse an export licence to give him time to raise the pounds 2.04m, the equivalent of the agreed price after tax.

In an ironic twist, Mr Clifford was supported by the reclusive billionaire John Paul Getty junior, whose late father founded the Getty Museum.

He gave pounds 100,000, a doubly generous gesture, given the fiasco over his previous offer of pounds 1m two years ago to help Mr Clifford in a similar campaign: to prevent the Canova statue of The Three Graces going to the Getty Museum.

Then, he retracted the donation after Mr Clifford attributed his generosity to a feud with his father. It was handed over only after fulsome apologies from the director.

Recently Mr Clifford issued increasingly heartfelt appeals for cash and was twice given extensions of his deadline by the Department of National Heritage after failing to reach his target. Earlier this month, when he was still pounds 286,000 short, he said: "Summer holidays and the postal strike have not helped us. We must now forget the 'After you, Claude. No, after you, Cecil' stance and find the rest of the money." The bulk of the cash - pounds 1.5m - has been put up by the Heritage Lottery Fund, while the Scottish Office and the National Art Collections Fund gave pounds 100,000 each.

Guercino painted Erminia finding the wounded Tancred for the Archduchess of Mantua, in Italy, where it remained until 1711. It was bought by the Earl of Carlisle in 1772 for Castle Howard. The painting illustrates a passage from Tasso's epic La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Freed) in which Tancred the Christian knight was wounded. Stricken by grief, his lover, Erminia, binds his wounds with her hair.

A thief walked off with a pounds 500,000 painting from a van in London on Tuesday. Scotland Yard does not know if the theft of the oil by Burne- Jones, Two girls with a viol and music, was opportunism or planned. It had just arrived from the US and was about to be delivered in South Kensington.