Do not expect it to grace the walls of Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s Wiltshire mansion or their London townhouse.

A new painting of the couple depicts the singer, grotesquely muscled, lying naked on a bed as her husband paws her thigh. It is a highly unflattering portrait of the couple and it marks the second round in an apparent skirmish between Ritchie and Peter Howson, the artist.

According to Matthew Flowers, Howson’s dealer, Ritchie, who prides himself on his robust “diamond geezer” persona, was unhappy about two earlier paintings, completed four years ago, which also showed the singer nude.

“Peter’s a bit obsessed with Madonna,” said Flowers. “There are strong rumours that Ritchie was very jealous of the earlier pictures and wanted to knock Peter’s block off.” He suspects these rumours reached Howson, who has provoked Ritchie further by returning to the subject.

Yesterday Howson admitted: “It’s probably a subconscious thing that I’ve got with Ritchie and yes, I’ve heard that he may not have liked my other portraits.” He added: “I’ve never actually fancied her but I admit I’ve got a thing about her.”

At one stage Madonna was a fan of Howson, who came to prominence as Britain’s official war artist in Bosnia in the 1990s. She owns four of his paintings.

The singer, 48, has never sat for Howson and his first two portraits were painted using photographs from magazines and from naked pictures in her book Sex. One showed her on a bed surrounded by biblical symbols.

Madonna, a one-time Catholic, is a convert to Kabbalah, a branch of Judaism. Howson, 49, a one-time alcoholic who was deeply traumatised by his experiences covering the Balkan wars, is now a committed Christian.

The second 2002 portrait, in which she is also naked, shows her squatting in a churchyard. “It should remind her of her own mortality,” said Howson at the time. “She could have just risen from the grave or be about to return to it.”

Howson, who was a body-building fanatic, nearly always portrays people in his pictures as highly muscled and almost grotesque. Although Madonna is lean and muscular, the picture exaggerates her bulk.

He admits that in the latest picture he superimposed his own face on the body of the singer. The Ritchie figure has been compared with Shrek, the cartoon ogre. The painting is on sale for £15,000 at an exhibition of Howson’s work at the Gatehouse gallery, Glasgow, which opened last week.

Ritchie may be particularly irritated to hear that Howson’s sole motive for selling the portrait was to raise some quick money to buy a new house.

Ritchie could not be contacted.

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