Europe

It is thought that the German artist Adelheid Dietrich (1827-91), renowned for her incredibly detailed still-lifes of fruit and flowers, completed only 50 paintings during her career.

A recent sale at Dorotheum (28/25/22% buyer’s premium) in Vienna was topped by this spectacular diamond and aquamarine tiara-necklace by Cartier London.

Not only does this Dutch 18ct gold and white carnelian demi-parure c.1820 include a period case but the original handwritten invoice from 1824 survives.

The sky was (almost) the limit at the recent sale at Bassenge (28% buyer’s premium) in Berlin when an Islamic celestial globe came up for sale.

It was a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art sometime in the 1880s that inspired Louis Comfort Tiffany to produce his so-called Cypriote range of art glass.

For 300 years, from the 1520s to the 1820s, the great Gothic cathedral in Cologne remained unfinished – the building overshadowed by a large crane, which for centuries dominated the panorama on the banks of the Rhine.

Vienna saleroom Dorotheum (28/25/22/18% buyer’s premium) was hoping to send a positive signal for the art market from its latest Old Master sale.

The sale of Selected Works at Grisebach in Berlin includes this early photographic view of Paris, taken in the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray.

In April this year, the founder of the auction house Nusser in Munich, Ursula Nusser, died aged just 66.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book sales.

Edvard Munch returned to the subject 'Woman in Moonlight – The Voice' on several occasions.

The Paris auction centre Drouot opened its doors again last month in France following the lockdown.

Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) recent sale in Paris of books and manuscripts was led at €125,000 (£113,635) by a Nobel Prize for Literature medal awarded in 1947, just four years before his death, to the essayist, critic, novelist and dramatist André Gide.

A memento of the last great age of transatlantic ocean travel can be found at the sale of Peter Karbstein in Düsseldorf on July 11.

Military uniforms reached their ornamental peak in the 19th century Western Europe – with the leaders of the day sharing in their ostentation

Our regular listing of books and works on paper auctions the UK and Ireland.