A Picasso painting owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Art Foundation, which was at the centre of a dispute about its Nazi-era history, is to go under the hammer.

Lloyd Webber — composer of musicals like “Cats” — originally announced his intention to sell “Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto” for charity in 2006.

It was later withdrawn from auction after a claim that a previous owner, German-Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, had sold it under duress from the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s.

But von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s descendants reached an out-of-court settlement in the US in January with the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, which is selling the picture, allowing it to retain ownership.

A Picasso masterpiece unseen in public for 43 years fetched more than twice its expected price at auction – going for £8.1million at last night’s Christie’s sale.

Tete de Femme (Jacqueline), a 1963 portrait of the artist’s second wife, had not been seen in public since 1967 and was expected to fetch £4million.

Jacqueline had an unusually short neck and it is said that Picasso would jokingly exaggerate its size in his portraits – as in this elongated example.

A woman who was taking an art class at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has accidentally fallen into a $130million Picasso painting and damaged it.

The painting called The Actor sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner.

The woman was attending an adult education class last week when she lost her balance and fell against The Actor, damaging the lower right corner.

A late “musketeer” painting by Pablo Picasso sold for 7 million pounds ($11.5 million) at Sotheby’s last night as buyers looked for value in the contracted auction market for Impressionist art.

The 1969 work dates to a period late in Picasso’s life when he was obsessed with floppy-hatted swashbucklers and their Casanova lifestyles.

In this version, Picasso’s doppelganger stands before a velvety red backdrop in a yellow jacket. He holds a sword as if posing for an Old Master portrait.

A Pablo Picasso sketchbook worth several million dollars has been stolen from a museum in Paris.

There is no sign of a break-in at the Picasso Museum in the Marais area of the city, yet the red notebook containing 33 pencil drawings disappeared on Monday night, police said.

The sketchbook has been valued at $9.8 Million to $14 Million.

The private collection amassed by the fashion designer and his partner Pierre Berge is considered one of the finest in the world.

Labeled the “sale of the century” by Christie’s, it will include over 700 lots with an estimated total value of €200 million to €300 million ($255 million to $380 million).

Berges and Saint Laurent met in 1958 and set themselves the goal of buying the best paintings and sculptures they could lay their hands on.