The Old Masters auctions in New York saw notable results this week, with new records set for artists including Artemisia Gentileschi, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, while also bringing historically significant works—some fresh to market or newly restituted—into public view.
Christie’s Old Masters auction on Wednesday fetched a $54.3m with fees, the highest total for a New York sale in the category in more than a decade. One of Artemisia Gentileschi’s earliest self-portraits sold for a record $5.7m during its auction debut. Depicted as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Gentileschi painted herself holding a martyr’s palm leaf and wearing a crown and royal robes with a peek of a spiked wheel behind her. The winning bid far exceeded the painting’s $2.5m to $3.5m estimate, and also surpassed the previous record for a Gentileschi work at auction, €4.8m at an Artcurial Paris sale in 2019.
Also during Wednesday’s sale at Christie’s, Canaletto’s Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day (around 1754) sold for $30.5m with fees. A different painting of the same view of the Venetian Lagoon broke the artist’s record at auction in July when it sold for £31.9m at Christie’s London.
During Christie’s Old Master and British Drawings sale on Thursday, a miniature drawing of a foot recently attributed to Michaelangelo sold for a record-breaking $27.2m with fees. The five-inch red chalk drawing is believed to be a study for the Sistine Chapel and is fresh to market, which likely helped it hop well above its $2m high estimate. The consignor is located in Northern California, and the drawing has been in his family since the late 18th century. The previous record for a drawing by Michelangelo was €23.2m with fees, set at Christie’s Paris in 2022.
Rembrandt, Young Lion Resting Courtesy Sotheby’s
One of the buzziest lots of the week was Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting, a small chalk drawing that sold at Sotheby's New York on Wednesday for $17.8m will fees. The drawing hammered at $15m—on the low end of its estimate range—but is still the highest price ever fetched for a Rembrandt drawing at auction. The work was consigned by Thomas S. Kaplan and Daphne Recanati Kaplan. The billionaire and his wife have built the largest privately-owned collection of Rembrandts in the world, and Young Lion Resting was the first work by the artist the couple acquired. All proceeds from the sale will go toward Panthera, the Kaplans’ charity for wild cats. The work is the last of six known drawings of lions by Rembrandt in private hands. Others are in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and two in the British Museum. In his newsletter The Gray Market, Tim Schneider reported the drawing was purchased by Dutch dealer Salomon Lilian “on behalf of a big collector”.
A rare Hebrew illuminated manuscript, dating back to 15th-century Vienna, sold for $6.4m at Sotheby’s on Thursday. Called the Rothschild Vienna Mahzor, the book of High Holiday prayers was acquired by the famed banking family it was named for in 1812 in Nuremberg and was passed down through generations of the family. However, the manuscript was seized during the Holocaust and sent to the Austrian National Library where, according to Sotheby’s, it was unrecognised as Nazi loot. The mahzor only resurfaced publicly in 2021 when it was loaned for an exhibition dedicated to the Viennese branch of the Rothschilds—the family hadn’t even known the manuscript was in the library. The Austrian government voluntarily restituted the mahzor last year after researching its provenance, setting the stage for its appearance at auction.
