London

The Great Masters of Italian painting shine in the City

At Sotheby's and Christie's £38m for the 39 lots sold out of the 48 offered. Tiepolo, Hayez, Marieschi, Botticelli and Rosso Fiorentino topped the list

by Giovanni Gasparini

5 December 2024

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Pieter Brueghel II (Brussels 1564-1638) «The Sermon of St. John the Baptist»

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Key points

Tiepolo, Hayez and Marieschi at Christie's
Botticelli, Rosso Fiorentino and Artemisia Gentileschi at Sotheby's
Lights and Shadows in 19th Century English Painting

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While Contemporary art continued its run for the third consecutive month with the opening of the ArtBasel fair in Miami, London devoted the week to classical art and, in particular, to paintings by the great masters. The two main evening auctions were held respectively at Christie's on 3 December and Sotheby's on 4, bringing a total of £38m for the 39 lots sold out of the 48 offered, of which 11 were over £1m; significant results but surpassed by only one lot at the 20th Century auctions in November in New York.

The Old Masters sector remains, therefore, a niche in which finding valuable works is a challenge, but when this happens it also attracts buyers from unusual backgrounds, hunting for the trophy with the resonant name, as was well illustrated by the participation at both auctions of the directors of the 20th century and contemporary art departments on the phone with fierce clients who one can assume do not regularly buy old paintings.

It is interesting to note the different approach of the two auction houses: Christie's offered no less than seven lots without reserve, of which only one disappointed expectations, and only one guaranteed by a third party, moreover, without any real need, given the battle of relaunches unleashed by the nude by Francesco Hayez. While Sotheby's arranged four guarantees to protect the main lots and one of these third parties probably saved the work attributed to Artemisia Gentileschi, initially guaranteed directly by the auction house, which would otherwise have remained unsold.

Tiepolo, Hayez and Marieschi at Christie's

It took only 45 minutes for Christie's to sell 20 of the 23 catalogue lots remaining after the withdrawal of three minor works, for a £14m revenue thanks to five million results, led by a stunning Van Dyck canvas fetching up to £3.4m (estimate £2-3m), the main side of which depicts a white Andalusian horse, while on the reverse side a rare landscape by the artist, better known for his noble portraits, was recently rediscovered.

The greatest satisfaction, however, comes from the trio of Italian artists in the catalogue, all from Venice: a large painting of carnival figures by Giambattista Tiepolo touches close to £2.5m, from an estimate of £1-1.5m, while a pair of classic views of Venice painted by Michele Marieschi in the first half of the 1700s, boldly bid without reserve, surpass the high estimate at £1.1m with commissions, and, finally, Hayez's seductive life-size nude of Bethsheba at her bath also chased by the director of the department of 20th and 21st century art Giovanna Bertazzoni reaches £1.5m from an estimate of 600-800,000

Old Master: l’antico a Londra è italiano
Photogallery11 foto

Results also exceeded expectations for the leading Flemish painters of the 17th century: Pieter Brueghel II with a large canvas of the 'Sermon of St John the Baptist' doubling the low estimate to £1.6m, and the more mysterious Clara Peeters, one of the few female signatures of the time, also prized at the Spanish court, specialising in detailed still lifes such as the one long fought over to reach £655,000, over four times the high estimate, while a portrait attributed to the Brussels-based Michaelina Wautier was withdrawn.

Botticelli, Rosso Fiorentino and Artemisia Gentileschi at Sotheby's

Italian art was also the undisputed star the following evening at Sotheby's, where 19 of the 25 lots changed hands for proceeds of £24.2m with commissions, above the pre-sale high estimate of £13.3m to £19.4m thanks to six million-plus adjudications.

The six paintings of the Italian school that sold, after the withdrawal of a religious work by Orazio Gentileschi estimated at £300-400,000 and a portrait by Jacopo Amigoni that remained unsold, brought in £14.8 million, of which almost £10 million (the difference with the proceeds from the previous evening's auction) for the main 'trophy' in contention, a youthful work by Botticelli that has remained in the same English family for over a century, a delicate 'Virgin and Child Enthroned' that in an eight-minute bidding battle saw a dozen contenders, including the director of the auction house's contemporary art department on the phone to a mysterious client, and reached a final price of £9.960,000 from a guaranteed estimate of £2-3 million.

Following this, two other lots started from an identical estimate, but with very different outcomes: another religious painting with the 'Virgin and Child and Infant St John the Baptist', a Mannerist work by Rosso Fiorentino dated around 1517-17, achieved a new auction record for the artist by touching the high estimate at £2.9m with commissions, while the 'Mary Magdalene in Meditation' with its distinctive yellow drape attributed to Artemisia Gentileschi was most likely saved by a third party guarantee added at the last moment that sold the painting for £1.4m, well below estimate. Uncertainty as to whether the attribution is to the 1720s or to the early period when Artemisia was in the workshop of her father Orazio, which would suggest a collaboration between the two, seems to have penalised this work which perhaps also suffers from a certain lack of pathos.

A large view of Venice by Joli tripled its high estimate, fetching up to £360,000 from an estimate of £80-120,000. Completing the list of millionaire results were three works that were very different in every respect, but shared a renowned name. The painting of the 'Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine' by Rubens quadrupled the low estimate of £600,000 realising £2.4 million and rendering the third party guarantee added to the catalogue useless.

Lights and Shadows in 19th Century English Painting

The portrait of a hound dog painted by George Stubbs, the specialist in this genre favoured by the hunting nobility, confirmed its low estimate of £1.5-2m at £1.8m with commissions, the only one of the three English academic painters not to go unsold as did the society portraits by Thomas Gainsbourough and Thomas Lawrenc. Also unsold was Osman Hamdy Bey's orentalist female nude estimated at £800,000 - £1.2m, but the auction closed on a positive note with the last lot fetching up to £2.2m from an estimate of £300-500,000: this is a nineteenth-century scene on a monumental decorative panel by the prematurely deceased Ernst Klimt that was completed and exhibited by his better-known brother Gustav in 1895; the same painting had sold for £140k 40 years ago.