Led by a Resplendent Tiepolo Altarpiece, Sotheby’s Old Masters Sales in New York Raked in More Than $76 Million

Powered by two outstanding and record-setting works by Italian
artists, Sotheby’s Old Master paintings evening sale (now simply
called Master Paintings in an effort to make it sound more
youthful) and its daytime Old Master drawings auction, both in New
York, delivered $61 million and $15.1 million respectively,
indicating that an aging market can still reach for significant
heights.

That was evident in the Old Master drawings morning session with
Andrea Mantegna’s stunning and page-sized 15th-century work in pen
and brown ink, The Triumph of Alexandria. The only
surviving preparatory study for the artist’s famed series of nine
monumental paintings, it sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for
a record $11.7 million (against an unpublished estimate in excess
of $12 million).

The drawing, depicting the triumphal procession of Julius Caesar
and his army through Rome, was recently included in the National
Gallery of London exhibition “Mantegna and Bellini” after being
discovered and bought as an unattributed work for under $1,000 from
a small German auction house.

The previous high for a Mantegna drawing was $560,972, set at
the Italian auction house Farsettiarte in November 2013.

“The condition on it was not perfect,” said Gregory Rubenstein,
the head of Sotheby’s Old Master drawings department. “But it’s 530
years old and it’s the rarest of the rare.”

“Ten million for a 15th-century drawing?” observed London dealer
Stephen Ongpin, referring to the hammer price. “They should be
delighted!”

Another high was set with Bernardino di Betto di Biagio’s
(called Pinturicchio) devotional pen-and-brown-ink drawing
Madonna and Child. The tiny picture appeared at auction
after being discovered by scholars and sold for $920,000
(against a $400,000 to $600,000 estimate) to the same telephone
bidder who bought the Mantegna.

Though decidedly less well known, Mountainous Landscape
With Travellers on a Rocky Path, an early 17th-century work by
the Dutch Golden Age artist Roelandt Savery, sold
for $212,500, busting its $40,000 to $60,000 estimate.

The drawings session, including fees, came in just above the low
end of its $14.8 million to $16 million pre-sale estimate, snaring
a top-heavy 27.8 percent buy-in rate by lot. The hammer total,
a better gauge in measuring performance to estimates, was $12.8
million.

And Now for the Main Event…

That success rate improved somewhat in the evening’s Master
Paintings sale, with a 25 percent buy-in rate by lot for the 51
works that sold.

The $61 million total, including fees, was the highest Old
Masters sale tally in New York since 2012. The figure beat out
last January’s $52.7 million result by more than 14 percent,
and inched towards the high end of the $47.7 million to $61.8
million pre-sale estimate. The hammer total was $50.9 million.

A big chunk of that result came late in the evening when
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s magnificently color-charged altarpiece,
Madonna of the Rosary With Angels (1735), sold to an
telephone bidder for a record $17.3 million (against an unpublished
estimate in excess of $15 million).

The eight-foot-tall painting, which is signed and dated, was
bought by its consignor for $1.9 million at Sotheby’s London in
July 1989, at the height of that era’s art market boom.

Though rather conventional in the stellar oeuvre of the Flemish
master Peter Paul Rubens, his Virgin and Christ Child,
With Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist (circa
1611–14) came to market as a recently rediscovered and previously
unrecorded work, and sold to a telephone bidder for $7.1 million
(its pre-sale estimate was between $6 million and $8 million).

The painting’s last outing at auction was at Sotheby’s London in
June 1946, when it made £1,700. Since then, it has mostly been
attributed as a workshop replica, and Sotheby’s specialist and
former Old Master dealer Otto Naumann is credited with the research
that elevated the work to autograph status.

A second Rubens, The Last Supper, en grisaille
(circa 1630), sold to another telephone bidder for $2.3
million (it was estimated to go for between $1.5 million and $2
million).

A weighty provenance enhanced the outcome
of Canaletto’s Venice, A View of the Grand Canal
Looking East With Santa Maria della Salute (circa 1740),
which was deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York to benefit its acquisition fund. The was made $5.3 million
against an estimate of $3 million to $5 million.

Though lacking the gloomy gravitas of his late work, the
earliest known oil painting by Goya, an oil sketch from 1771 titled
Hannibal the Conqueror Viewing Italy From the Alps for the
First Time, triggered a bidding war and pulled in $1.8
million against an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. It last
sold at Sotheby’s New York in January 2000 for $497,500.

While big names dominated the top ten list of entries, a
stunning picture depicting an illuminated manuscript (1615–25) by
an anonymous Netherlandish artist shot to more than $1.6 million.
It was estimated to fetch $700,000 to $900,000.

The ornate, practically photo-realist manuscript opens to reveal
several richly illustrated pages, as if an invisible hand was
flipping through. The single cited provenance for the work is an
anonymous private 19th-century collection in France.

“In general, things with strong images, even off-beat images,
performed well,” said Christopher Apostle, the head of the auction
house’s Old Master paintings department in New York. “There seems
to be a great appetite for earlier works.”

Christie’s—Sotheby’s Georgian-era rival—no longer mounts an Old
Master paintings evening sale in January, but staged its Old Master
and British drawings sale on the 28th, realizing $5.5 million for
the 93 lots that sold and a 27 percent buy-in rate by
lot. Pre-sale expectations were pegged at roughly $4 million
to $6 million. The hammer tally was $4.5 million.

The top lot there was Canaletto’s decidedly non-Venetian
View of the South Front of Warwick Castle. It sold
for $915,000 (and was estimated to go for between $800,000 and
$1.2 million).

Of the unexpected over-achievers, Luca Signorelli’s handsome
study, A Young Man Seen
From Behind, Cloaked With a Study of a Young Woman Resting on Her
Hand, raced
to $375,000 (its estimate was between $50,000 and $70,000).

Christie’s result blew past last January’s much tamer $2.7
million sale.

The post Led by a Resplendent Tiepolo Altarpiece, Sotheby’s
Old Masters Sales in New York Raked in More Than $76 Million
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