Old Masters

One of the few images of a 16th century Eastern potentate by a Western artist emerged from a ‘royal collection’ to sell for a multi-estimate sum at Sotheby’s.

Christie’s latest ‘Classic Week’ sales series put in a robust performance with sales of Old Master and 19th century pictures, sculpture and antiquities generating a premium-inclusive total of $79.5m (£61.16m).

As a rule, Lempertz (24/20% buyer’s premium) in Cologne always opens its spring season with a sale of moderately priced Old Master and 19th century paintings.

Researching Old Master paintings is sometimes likened to putting together the pieces of a jigsaw. But for one upcoming work, it seems this was quite literally the case.

A drawing offered at a Paris auction with an attribution to Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528) was hammered down at €1.13m (£980,000).

St James’s art dealer Derek Johns is offering a portrait of Sir Everard Fawkener, a former British ambassador to Constantinople, by Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-89).

The ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ is currently on show at Paris Contemporary art dealership Galerie Kamel Mennour opposite a work more than 400 years its junior.

In the 1980s, the 3ft 7in x 2ft 9in (1.1m x 85cm) canvas of Saint Bartholomew being offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 30 was tentatively ascribed to Caravaggio. The treatment of light and shadow and the extreme naturalism in the portrayal certainly indicate a proximity to the revolutionary artist.

A Mannerist bronze after Giambologna and a rediscovered oil sketch by Peter Paul Rubens posted seven-figure sums during the series of sales coinciding with the Salon du Dessin fair in Paris.

A pair of early George III carved walnut Gainsborough chairs, c.1765, were among the early highlight sales at BADA 2019. Offered from the stand of Richard Courtney in excellent original condition, they sold for a price in the region of £70,000.