In October 1555 the Italian master Titian painted the portrait of Angelico Vespucci - a Venetian merchant whose cruelty words could not capture.

When Vespucci was revealed to be the elusive monster who had been flaying young women across the city, he vanished inexplicably, along with the painting. All that remained was a chilling warning: when the portrait emerges, so will the man.

Now the lost Titian masterpiece has surfaced in modern-day London, and skinless corpses are amassing across the globe. And it will fall to an unlikely man from the fringes of the art world to unravel half a millennium of myth, mystery and murder.