NYC23933 Old Masters

OLD MASTERS NEW YOR K | 4 F EB R UA RY 2 02 6

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OLD MASTERS AUCTION Wednesday 4 February 2026 at 10.00am (Lots 1–45)

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EXHIBITION 29 January 10.00am-5.00pm 30 January 10.00am-5.00pm 31 January 10.00am-5.00pm 1 February 1.00pm-5.00pm 2 February 10.00am-5.00pm 3 February 10.00am-5.00pm

AUCTIONEERS Jennifer Wright and Henry Pettifer

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AUCTION CODE AND NUMBER In sending absentee bids or making enquiries, this sale should be referred to as GINNIE-23933

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PRINCIPAL AUCTIONEER Adrien Meyer

Front Cover: Lot 8

Inside Front cover: Lot 23, Lot 16

Please scan for complete auction information

Opposite: Lot 4

Inside Back cover: Lot 5

Back cover: Lot 40

18/ 12/2024

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MAERTEN DE VOS (ANTWERP 1532-1603) An Archangel

oil on panel, a fragment 18Ω x 23º in. (47 x 59 cm.) $50,000-70,000

£38,000-52,000 €43,000-60,000

PROVENANCE:

Art market, Gloucestershire, by whom sold, Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 28 October 1955, lot 164, as ‘Floris’ (50 gns.).

Private collection, Munich, until recently.

This expressive panel by Maerten de Vos exemplifies the artist’s distinctive blend of Italianate dynamism and Flemish detail. Together with the brothers Ambrosius I and Frans Francken I, de Vos ranks among the most important painters of altarpieces in Antwerp during the late sixteenth century. In 1558 he was enrolled as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp, where he spent most of his life, but for possibly travelling to Italy in the 1550s or 1560s.

His work is highly eclectic—he borrowed motifs and figures from Michelangelo, Veronese, and Tintoretto, as well as his Flemish contemporaries Pieter Aertsen and Frans Floris.

Datable to circa 1570-80, the picture, a surviving fragment of a larger panel from an altarpiece, distills the compositional sweep of his larger ecclesiastical works into picture likely intended for a domestic environment. The archangel is shown in arresting three-quarter profile, turning sharply as he draws his sword.

The taut musculature, fluttering drapery and expansive wings reflect the artist’s absorption of Italian Mannerism, while the luminous townscape—marked by winding waterways, clustered architecture and distant rolling hills—testifies to de Vos’s characteristic attention to landscape setting. The iridescent modelling of the feathers and the warm, silvery flesh tones correspond closely with other works by de Vos of this period.

PROPERTY FROM THE HISPANIC SOCIETY MUSEUM TO BENEFIT THE COLLECTION CARE AND ACQUISITION FUND

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WILLEM ADRIAENSZ. KEY (BREDA 1515/16-1568 ANTWERP)

Portrait of a lady, three-quarter length, traditionally identified as the wife of Martinus del Rio oil on panel 33√ x 26¡ in. (86 x 66.8 cm.) $60,000-80,000

£45,000-60,000 €52,000-68,000

PROVENANCE:

(Possibly) Baron van der Graecht, Bruges. with Ehrich Galleries, New York, where acquired by, Rita de Acosta Lydig (1875-1929), New York; her sale, American Art Galleries, New York, 4 April 1913, lot 133, as 'Antonio Moro', where acquired with its pendant (lot 132) by the following ($5,200), with Ehrich Galleries, New York, where acquired by, Archer Milton Huntington (1870-1955), New York, and by whom presented to the Hispanic Society of America on 25 August 1921.

EXHIBITED:

Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Exhibition of Flemish Painting, 15 November6 December 1916, as Anthonis Mor, loaned by Ehrich Galleries.

LITERATURE:

'Mrs. Lydig to Sell her Art Treasures', The Sun, 23 February 1913, p. 11, as Anthonis Mor. 'Lydig Art Sale April 4', New-York Tribune, 23 February 1913, p. 11, as Anthonis Mor. 'Mrs. Philip Lydig's Notable Art Collection on View', The Sun, 16 March 1913, p. 11, as Anthonis Mor. W.R. Valentiner, The Rita Lydig Collection, New York, 1913, pp. xiii-xv and 13, no. 10, as Anthonis Mor. W.R. Valentiner, 'Mrs. Lydig's Library', Art in America, I, no. 2, April 1913, p. 67, fig. 2, and pp. 74-75, as Anthonis Mor. 'Mrs. Lydig's Renaissance and Gothic Objects', New-York Tribune, 1 April 1913, p. 13, as Anthonis Mor. 'Mrs. Lydig's Art is Charming in Home', The Sun, 1 April 1913, p. 13, as Anthonis Mor. 'Mrs. Lydig's Home Nest of Treasures', The Sun, 2 April 1913, p. 97, as Anthonis Mor. 'Lydig Collection Sold for $362,555', The New York Times, 5 April 1913, p. 15, as Anthonis Mor.

'Loan Exhibition Continues. Prof. G.H. Edgell to Hold Conference on Paintings at 3.30', The Harvard Crimson, 21 November 1916, as Anthonis Mor. E.W. Forbes, Report of the Fogg Art Museum, 1916-17, Cambridge, 1917, p. 249, as Anthonis Mor. Fogg Museum, Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Paintings, Cambridge, 1919, p. 308.

Hispanic Society of America, List of Paintings, New York, 1925, n.p., no. A65, as Artist Unknown.

E. du Gué Trapier, Catalogue of Paintings (16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries) in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York, 1929, pp. 28-29, no. A65, as attributed to Anthonis Mor. Hispanic Society of America, Moro in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York, 1930, no. A65, as attributed to Anthonis Mor. G. Marlier, Anthonis Mor van Dashorst (Antonio Moro), Brussels, 1934, p. 107, no. 85, under doubtful attributions.

K. Morris Lester, Accessories of Dress, Peoria, 1940, pp. 545 and 547, pl. LV, as attributed to Anthonis Mor J. Hunt, 'Jewelled Neck Furs and Flohpelze', Pantheon, May/June 1963, pp. 151-153 and 157, figs. 2 and 10, as Unknown Artist, formerly ascribed to Anthonis Mor. M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, XIII, Antonis Mor and his Contemporaries, New York and Washington, 1975, p. 106, no. 406, pl. 196, as Anthonis Mor.

This depiction of a richly attired lady belongs to the distinguished corpus of female portraits by Willem Key, one of the leading portraitists active in midsixteenth-century Antwerp. Born in Breda around 1515-16, Key trained with Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Lambert Lombard before becoming a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1542. Celebrated by his contemporaries for both history painting and, above all, for his portraiture, Key served a sophisticated, often humanist clientele drawn from local patrician circles and the broader Habsburg administrative elite.

The present sitter, traditionally identified as the wife of Martinus del Rio, stands before a dark, unarticulated ground, her figure animated by the rich interplay of textures that Key renders with characteristic precision. Her velvet gown, edged in fur and broadened at the shoulders, is offset by exquisitely described blackwork sleeves, a crisp white ruff and partlet, and a cascade of jewels: a corsage of enameled gold ornaments at her neckline, a pendant cameo at her breast, a girdle of linked settings strung with small tufts of fur, a heavy pomander at her waist, and several elaborate rings.

The del Rio family was among the most prominent Spanish merchant dynasties established in Antwerp. They had risen to considerable prominence in the commercial and political life of the Habsburg Netherlands. In a 1919 catalogue of pictures in the Fogg Museum, the identity of the male pendant to the present picture (fig. 1) was corrected to Antonio del Rio (d. 1586), the father of Martinus, which would make the present portrait a depiction of Antonio's wife, Eleonora López de Villanova (d. 1602; Fogg Museum, loc. cit.). Martinus Antonius del Rio (1551-1608), would become a renowned Jesuit theologian and classical scholar, celebrated for his commentaries on Seneca and his influential treatise Disquisitionum Magicarum (1599). The family's connections to the highest echelons of Netherlandish society are further attested by their hosting of such figures as Cardinal Granvelle and Anne of Austria, Queen of Spain. A documented link between the del Rios and the Key workshop is provided by a pair of altarpiece shutters in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, depicting Antonio del Rio, his wife, and two sons—works now given to Willem's nephew Adriaen Thomasz. Key. For much of the twentieth century, this portrait and its male pendant were cataloged as by Anthonis Mor. While in the collection of the socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig, Wilhelm R. Valentiner published the pair as 'two masterpieces'

by Mor, likely dating to the painter's stay in Madrid (W.R. Valentiner, 1913, op. cit., pp. xiii and 12). Max J. Friedländer later published them, again as by Mor, describing the pair as 'portraits of a couple, supposedly Martinus del Rio and his wife', though he remarked that 'the man in particular is characteristic [of Mor]' (M. Friedländer, op. cit., p. 106). Georges Marlier had already sounded a cautious note in 1934, relegating the present work to a chapter of 'attributions douteuses' (G. Marlier, op. cit., p. 107, no. 85).

We are grateful to Koenraad Jonckheere for endorsing the attribution on the basis of digital photographs (written communication, 8 December 2025).

Fig. 1 Attributed to Willem Key, Portrait of a Man, present location unknown.

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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ADRIAEN ISENBRANDT (?ANTWERP C. 1500-1551 BRUGES)

Portrait of a lady, half-length, holding a lapdog oil on panel, laid down on panel 19Ω x 15º in. (49.5 x 38.7 cm.) $400,000-600,000

£300,000-450,000 €350,000-510,000

PROVENANCE:

Princes of Ysenburg-Büdingen, Germany. with Rosenbaum, Frankfurt, by 1932.

(Possibly) with Schaeffer, Berlin 1933 (according to information found in the Witt Archive, The Courtauld Institute, London).

Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1875-1947), Schloss Rohoncz, by 1934, and by descent; Christie's, London, 4 July 2019, lot 1, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Lugano, Villa Favorita, Collection Fondation Chateau de Rohoncz, 1952, no. 119a.

LITERATURE:

M.J. Friedländer, Die Altniederländische Malerei, Berlin, 1933, XI, p. 140, no. 230, pl. 80.

R. Heinemann, Stiftung Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz, Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Lugano, 1937, I, p. 77, no.207; II, fig. 83.

M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, New York and Washington, 1974, XI, p.

93, no. 230, pl. 153.

One of the rarest and most compelling survivals of early sixteenth-century Bruges portraiture, the present panel occupies a distinctive place within the elusive oeuvre of Adriaen Isenbrandt. Of the two secular female portraits assigned to him by Max J. Friedländer (op. cit., 1974, nos. 229 and 230), the attribution of the other has since been questioned (see Christie’s, New York, 23 May 2024, lot 89), rendering the present work the sole autograph example of its type remaining in private hands. Its rarity is matched by the quiet eloquence of its execution, embodying with unusual clarity the refinements that position Isenbrandt, together with his contemporary Ambrosius Benson, as the principal custodian of Bruges painting in the decades following Gerard David’s death. In the composed stillness of an anonymous sitter, one encounters an artist whose subtlety of touch belies the scarcity of firmly documented works and whose authority was felt in the city long after his own name had receded into archival shadow.

Purchasing citizenship in Bruges in 1510 after completing his training elsewhere, Isenbrandt rapidly established himself as one of the city’s most prolific painters, his workshop catering not only to private patrons but also to the vibrant commercial markets of Bruges and Antwerp. No signed paintings by his hand survive, yet his distinctive artistic personality is evident in a group of stylistically coherent works, characterized by unbroken, porcelain-smooth flesh modelling, softly graduated sfumato in place of emphatic contour and a polished, quietly introspective surface. Since its last appearance at auction in 2019, the removal of a discolored varnish has revealed the delicacy of Isenbrandt’s brushwork with new immediacy. The sitter’s luminous skin, the renewed finesse of her hands, the fine strands of the dog’s coat and the clarified vista of the landscape, all within a palette restored to fresh radiance, now speak with renewed brilliance to the painter’s meticulous craft.

Portraits independent of religious narrative are exceptionally rare in Isenbrandt’s oeuvre, and the artist’s surviving examples typically adopt a threequarter profile with the sitter’s gaze gently averted. Here, however, the sitter meets the viewer directly, a deviation that imbues her quiet composure with an bracing immediacy. Her identity, like that of so many Bruges sitters, has been lost to time, yet her attire firmly situates her among the wealthy elite of the late 1520s and 1530s. She wears a dark green, square-necked gown revealing the embroidered edge of her chemise and under-dress, the sobriety of its silhouette

tempered by a sheer partlet edged with black and gold embroidery. A closefitting linen hood, its veil descending softly behind, frames her face with modest restraint, while the turned-back sleeves of her gown disclose undersleeves of figured red velvet – all signs of affluence.

Most arresting, however, is her magnificent pendant: a large table-cut stone set within an ornate double mount of gold and silver, surrounded by alternating rubies and pearls and suspended from a plain black ribbon. Such pendants were at the forefront of contemporary fashion and correspond closely to jewels designed by the French goldsmith Étienne Delaune (1518/19–1583) and those included in a Jewellery Book by Hans Holbein the Younger (London, British Museum). The contrast between the jewel’s opulence and the gown’s outward simplicity is characteristic of elite dress of the period, for the deep, saturated tones of dark fabrics required enormous quantities of costly dye and were themselves a form of conspicuous display.

In the sitter’s hand rests a small lapdog, with a white coat, an attribute that, as medieval color hierarchies remind us, aligned the animal with purity, truth and moral rectitude (see H. Klemettilä, Animals and Hunters in the Late Middle Ages: Evidence from the BnF MS fr. 616 of the Livre de chasse by Gaston Fébus, New York, 2015, p. 114, note 40). The breed, though not identifiable with certainty, bears affinity with the Löwchen (lion dog), popular throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In marital portraiture, the lapdog frequently served as an emblem of conjugal fidelity, raising the possibility that the panel once formed a pendant to a companion portrait of the sitter’s husband. Yet her direct gaze, so unusual in Isenbrandt’s portraiture, complicates this hypothesis, for a pendant pair would normally align the sitters’ eyes across the diptych rather than presenting her gaze outward to the viewer.

Through its restrained elegance and material richness, the portrait distils the qualities that secured Isenbrandt’s standing among Bruges’s most accomplished painters. This panel offers a compelling testament to his artistic identity: a master of quiet nuance, delicate modelling and understated splendor. In its rare survival, it stands not only as a key work within his corpus but also an exceptional example of the dignity and refinement that characterize the very best of early Netherlandish portraiture.

PROPERTY OF AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTOR

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PIETER COECKE VAN AELST I (AALST 1502-1550 BRUSSELS)

Mary Magdalene, seated in an interior, before an open window oil on panel 34æ x 26 in. (88.3 x 66 cm.) dated '1532' (upper left, in the cartouche) $500,000-800,000

£380,000-600,000 €430,000-680,000

PROVENANCE:

with F. Partridge, London; Christie's, London, 5 March 1920, lot 77, as B. van Orley.

Frederick, 2nd Baron Hesketh (1916-1955), Easton Neston, and by inheritance to his wife, Christian, Lady Hesketh (1929-2006), by whose estate sold; Sotheby's, London, 4 July 2007, lot 17, as 'Antwerp School, 1532', where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

G. Marlier, La Renaissance Flamande: Pierre Coeck d'Alost, Brussels, 1966, p. 251, as 'attributed by some to the Master of the Parrot'.

Dated 1532 and widely regarded as the only autograph version of this composition, the present Mary Magdalene is among the most accomplished devotional paintings by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, one of the defining artistic figures of the sixteenth-century Low Countries. Combining courtly refinement with psychological gravity, it presents the saint poised between worldly splendour and penitential transformation, exemplifying Coecke’s central role in shaping the visual language of Renaissance Antwerp and his rare ability to fuse humanist ideals and technical sophistication into an image of enduring devotional power.

Few artists in the sixteenth-century Lowlands embodied the full breadth of Renaissance artistic ambition with the assurance and intellectual curiosity of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, whose career unfolded across an extraordinary range of media – panel painting, print publishing, tapestry design and stained glass – each enriched by the same inventive restlessness that contemporaries found exceptional. His achievements were acknowledged at the highest levels: both Charles V and his sister Mary of Hungary appointed him court painter, a distinction reserved for the rare master whose virtuosity and erudition could serve imperial taste. Even after Coecke’s death, the vitality of this ‘ingenious and knowledgeable’ artist, as Karel van Mander described him in 1604 (Het Schilder-boeck), remained palpable. His workshop proved to be one of the most fertile of its generation, producing talents of the calibre of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As Max J. Friedländer observed, ‘the spirit of Brussels seems to have made its entry into Antwerp in the person of Pieter Coeck van Alost [sic]’ (Early Netherlandish Painting: Jan van Scorel and Pieter Coeck van Aelst, XII, New York and Washington, 1975, p. 32), capturing the breadth of cultural influence that radiated from Coecke’s practice.

It is within this milieu that the present Mary Magdalene was conceived, a work whose quiet composure belies the sophisticated theological and cultural currents that shaped its imagery. Between 1450 and 1520, devotion to the Magdalene experienced a distinct resurgence, one accelerated in 1517 when the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples rearticulated her identity not as a single biblical figure but as a conflation of three Maries, a move that shored up Catholic orthodoxy on the eve of the Reformation. In the Low Countries, Erasmus’ advocacy for images of saints as moral exempla rather than distant intercessors recalibrated her significance: the Magdalene’s arc – from sin to repentance and spiritual transformation – made her an ideal model for lay contemplation.

This was especially true in Antwerp, where a rising mercantile middle class increasingly sought images that affirmed both piety and cultivated taste.

Coecke’s interpretation participates in but also redefines the most successful visual formula of the period: the bust-length Magdalene perfected by Quentin Metsys and the Master of the Mansi Magdalene, whose subtle merging of worldly beauty and penitential gravity proved exceptionally resonant. Yet Coecke expands this paradigm with notable ambition. He situates the saint within a constructed interior whose window opens onto a serene, deeply recessionary landscape, an aperture that recalls the northern Italian idioms circulating in Bruges through émigré painters such as Ambrosius Benson, but which also aligns seamlessly with Antwerp pictorial language. The meandering river, clustered dwellings and softly dissolving mountains evoke the atmospheric Weltlandschaft of Joachim Patinir, offering the viewer a world both recognisably northern and quietly idealised. Within this luminous cosmos, the earthly daylight entering from the left serves as a carefully calculated foil to the more ineffable radiance emanating from the Magdalene herself.

The saint stands upon a shallow dais beneath a vivid green baldachin, its architectural clarity elevating her status while maintaining a tangible connection to the viewer’s space. Her attire – rich, exotic and suggestive of her former life – creates an intentional dialectic: she exists simultaneously as the figure of worldly allure and the penitent transformed by grace. Her attributes speak to this evolution with elegant precision. The gilded ointment jar recalls both her presence at the tomb and the anointing of Christ; the red flower, long understood as an emblem of the Christ Child’s innocence and the blood of the Crucifixion, also carries a further resonance in its seeds, which allude to resurrection. The inscribed date of ‘1532’, discreetly incorporated into the tasselled fitting of the baldachin at the upper left, situates the painting at a pivotal moment in Coecke’s career, when he was active in Antwerp and already operating with the assurance of a mature master. It predates both his journey to Constantinople in 1533 and his subsequent Italian travels of 1534–35, yet the work already displays the compositional control, courtly elegance and intellectual ambition that would characterise his production in the following decade.

The composition’s enduring popularity is confirmed by its replication in several versions, notably the example in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (inv. 408), attributed to an artist within Coecke’s circle. Until relatively recently, the authorship of this composition type remained unresolved, reflecting the complex artistic ecology of early sixteenth-century Antwerp. Georges Marlier articulated this ambiguity most clearly, observing that the firmly modelled face and sculptural handling of the Brussels version placed it within the immediate

entourage of Jan Gossaert, while other elements – above all the physiognomy of the Magdalene – pointed instead towards Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Bernard van Orley and the so-called Master with the Parrot (op. cit.). Together with the present panel, he observed that such works occupied a threshold between several leading artistic personalities of the period, underscoring the difficulty of isolating individual hands within a milieu shaped by shared models, workshop practices and a common courtly visual language.

Yet the present painting stands apart as the only version widely regarded as autograph. Peter van den Brink and Maryan Ainsworth support an attribution to Pieter Coecke van Aelst himself, with Dr Valentine Henderiks inclined to follow van den Brink’s attribution to Coecke himself on the basis of photographs, noting the work’s very high quality and the freedom of its drawing. Dr Sacha Zdanov, to whom we are also grateful, has noted a tantalising historical echo in a Mary Magdalene once listed among the possessions of Henry VIII, described as ‘the picture of Marye Magdaleyne with a cuppe standinge by her and a yellow flower in her hande’ (private communication). He observes that the present composition is the only example known to him that accords with such a description, uniting the ointment jar with a flower held in the saint’s hand.

Zdanov further records two additional versions beyond the Brussels example: one formerly in the collection of Lord Lee of Fareham, and another, of lesser quality, now in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (inv. 1948.6). The survival of these variants attests to the success of the invention, though the refinement and subtlety manifested in the present painting markedly surpass those of its known counterparts.

If the visible surface confirms Coecke’s mature mastery, the infrared reflectogram offers an even more intimate insight into his working process (fig.

1). The panel is shown to be fully underdrawn in a dry, carbon-based medium, a practice characteristic of Coecke and one that already sets his approach apart from the tightly controlled parallel hatching – often termed the ‘woodcut convention’ – favored by many Antwerp contemporaries. Beneath the present composition, the underdrawing displays the hallmarks of his hand: assured delineation in the figure and drapery, combined with an unusually free, almost painterly handling in the background architecture, landscape and still-life details, with hatching employed only sparingly for modelling. The infrared further reveals a number of pentimenti, most evident in the positioning of the eyes, nose and mouth, indicating that Coecke continued to refine proportion and expression during the painting stage rather than adhering rigidly to a fixed design. Particularly revealing is the landscape, which, though comprehensively underdrawn, was largely reimagined in paint, underscoring the artist’s independence in resolving spatial and atmospheric effects directly on the panel.

As Zdanov has observed, such evidence suggests that Coecke worked from an established composition without mechanical transfer. Maryan Ainsworth, whose technical studies of Coecke have been foundational, has described such features as fully consistent with his established working method.

Uniting devotional resonance, humanist influence and technical sophistication, the present Mary Magdalene stands as one of the most compelling testaments to Coecke’s expansive artistic intelligence – an image conceived with the calculated elegance of a court painter and the imaginative breadth of a true Renaissance master.

Fig. 1 IRR of the present lot.

A LIFE OF DISCERNING PASSIONS: THE COLLECTION OF H. RODES SR. AND PATRICIA HART

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PIETER BRUEGHEL THE YOUNGER (BRUSSELS 1564-1638 ANTWERP) A village scene with the Flight into Egypt signed 'BREVGHEL·' (lower left) oil on panel 16æ x 23 in. (42.5 x 58.5 cm.) $1,000,000-1,500,000

£750,000-1,100,000 €860,000-1,300,000

PROVENANCE:

Eugenie Jenny Mautner, née Neuwman (1856-1938), Vienna; her sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 17-18 November 1930, lot 31.

Private collection, Vienna, by circa 1955.

Anonymous sale; Dorotheum, Vienna, 7 April 2006, lot 120. with Galerie de Jonckheere, Geneva, by November 2006, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

K. Ertz, Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere (1564-1637/38): Die Gemälde mit kritischem oeuvrecatalog, I, Lingen 1998/2000, pp. 298, 441 and 443, no. E227, fig. 324.

Fig. 1 Jan Brueghel the Elder, Village landsacpe with Saint Martin, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (photo: Hans Thorwid, CC BY_SA).

Pieter Brueghel the Younger was celebrated for his quotidian village landscapes, often incorporating narrative scenes from the Bible. Unlike many of these paintings, which were repeated in several versions, this Village Landscape with the Flight into Egypt is among the rarest compositions in the artist's oeuvre.

Just three versions were recorded by the Brueghel scholar, Klaus Ertz, of which only two - the present panel included - he considered to be autograph beyond doubt (op. cit., nos. E226 and F228). When this painting reappeared at auction in 2006, Ertz described its condition as ‘truly outstanding' (loc. cit.). A loose and spontaneous underdrawing is visible through some of the thinly painted passages, showing changes to the position of the donkey’s hindquarters, the rungs of the fence, and the supports of the thatched roof of the temporary structure outside the tavern.

The village landscape, divided at center by a pair of trees, is animated by men drinking outside a tavern, women carrying large jugs for water, and travelers walking along a path. The serpentine contours of the path, trees and rooflines, together with the characterful figures, are typical of artist’s mature work. Among the villagers, at the far left, the Virgin cradles the newborn Christ, accompanied

by Joseph, who greets smiling on-lookers as they begin their journey into Egypt.

The almost incidental inclusion of episodes from the Bible into the Flemish landscape was popular in the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries, transporting the distant locales of the Bible into the familiar landscape of the every-viewer. Brueghel II relocated The Census at Bethlehem, The Massacre of the Innocents, and The Adoration of the Magi (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, inv. nos. 2903, 361, and 9132) to snow-capped northern villages, following the example of his father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who invented many of the compositions later echoed by his sons and grandsons.

Fig. 3 Jan Brueghel the Elder, A village landscape with the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

Ertz suggested that this composition was developed under the influence of Pieter's brother, Jan Brueghel the Elder (loc. cit.). Indeed the composition, especially the placement of the buildings, corresponds closely to Jan’s drawing Village landscape with Saint Martin (fig. 1, National Museum, Stockholm, inv. no. NMH THC 3259). Although no extant painting based directly on this drawing is known, Jan used it as the basis for other paintings, as exemplified by his The Search for the Inn, dated 1605 (fig. 2, Private collection; see K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625), Lingen, 2008, pp. 494-495). Ertz argued Pieter could have seen the drawing sometime between 1615 and 1622, when Jan returned from his travels to the northern Netherlands (1613-at least 1615) and was active again in Antwerp. This dating aligns with the usage of the signature ‘P. BREVGHEL’, which the artist adopted after 1616; before that time, he signed instead with the ‘e’ and ‘v’ inverted (2000, loc. cit., see also p. 15).

A second drawing, apparently unknown to Ertz, now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, complicates this theory (fig. 3, inv. no. 3786 Z). Given to Jan Brueghel the Elder, the drawing is a near replica of the present composition, replete with minor details visible in this painting, such as the man jumping the broken fence, the pair of figures, and pile of sticks at lower left. These similarities suggest that both works derive from a now-lost prime version, likely executed

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Stockholm drawing and related painting (figs. 1 and 2) may also have been inspired by this lost protoype. This theory is further supported by yet another drawing of the same scene, given to Jan Brueghel the Younger, last recorded in the van Meeuwen collection (K. Ertz, loc. cit.).

Both the Städel and the van Meeuwen drawings include the figure climbing a ladder leaning against the right side of the tavern, a detail Pieter the Younger omitted from the present painting. Instead, he expanded the deep foreground to accommodate additional figures along the path and pushed the city and church spire further into the background, suggesting their presence only through a faint skyline along the horizon.

Fig. 2 Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Search for the Inn, private collection.

PROPERTY FROM THE DESCENDANTS OF JOHN LORD BOOTH

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GIOVANNI DI PIETRO, LO SPAGNA (DOCUMENTED PERUGIA 1504-1528 SPOLETO) The Madonna and Child in a landscape oil on panel 11¡ x 8√ in. (28.8 x 22.7 cm.) $60,000-80,000

£45,000-60,000 €52,000-68,000

PROVENANCE:

(Probably) A bishop of the Simonetta family, Italy (a wax seal on the reverse; see note).

(Probably) Bojali family, Bologna (a wax seal on the reverse).

Count and Countess Malherbe, Paris, by 1909. with F. Kleinberger Galleries, New York, by 24 January 1923.

Ralph Harman Booth (1873-1931), Detroit, and by inheritance to his widow, Mrs. Ralph Harman Booth (née Mary Batterman, 1879-1951), Grosse Pointe, Michigan, by 6 September 1934, from whom acquired in 1946 by her son, John Lord Booth (1907-1994), Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, and by descent to the present owner.

LITERATURE:

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central and North Italian Schools, London, 1968, I, p. 412.

This intimate devotional panel is a characteristic work by Giovanni di Pietro, known as Lo Spagna, one of the most accomplished followers of Pietro Perugino. The composition presents the Virgin half-length against a tranquil Umbrian landscape, cradling the Christ Child, who gently holds a sprig of roses—an established symbol of his mother's purity and, through its thorns, a prefiguration of the Passion. The Virgin wears a blue mantle over a crimson dress, adorned with a gold star at her shoulder, while both figures are distinguished by gold halos. Behind them, a slender sapling rises against an atmospheric landscape of rolling hills and distant copses.

The painting exemplifies Lo Spagna's later style, in which the lessons of Perugino's workshop are tempered by the influence of the young Raphael, whose presence in Perugia during the first years of the sixteenth century profoundly affected the development of local painting. The composition relates to the Nativity in the Musée du Louvre, Paris—the central panel of an altarpiece originally in the church of Sant'Antonio in Perugia, documented by November 1510 as having been begun by Lo Spagna. The physiognomy of the Virgin recalls the artist's Madonna and Child, with a Monk Saint and Saint Catherine of Siena in the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The fluid treatment of fabric, quite distinct from the harder linear folds of the earlier Umbrian tradition, is evident in the Virgin's voluminous blue mantle, which cascades around her shoulders with a supple, natural fall.

Giovanni di Pietro was known as 'Lo Spagna' (the Spaniard), a sobriquet traditionally understood to indicate Spanish heritage, though neither his birthplace nor birth date is securely documented (E. Parlato, 'Giovanni di Pietro, detto lo Spagna', Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, LVI, Rome, 2001). The artist's career was entirely rooted in the towns and cities of Umbria, and none of his works betray traces of an Iberian training. He is first securely documented in Perugia on 9 March 1504, when he acted as arbiter in a dispute between the administrators of the Benedictine abbey of San Pietro and the painter Fiorenzo di Lorenzo—a role suggesting he already enjoyed considerable standing among the city's artists. Giorgio Vasari, writing in the second edition of the Vite (1568), praised Lo Spagna's coloristic skills and recorded that he was forced to leave Perugia due to the hostility of local artists (E. Parlato, loc. cit.). By late 1507, Lo Spagna had relocated to Todi, and subsequently to Spoleto.

The reverse of the panel preserves several wax seals that offer important evidence of its early Italian provenance. The most legible is an episcopal seal, surmounted by a miter and bearing the partial inscription 'EPISCOPUS' around its circumference. The arms have been identified as those of the Simonetta family, several of whose members held Italian bishoprics during the sixteenth century; among them was Giacomo Simonetta (1475-1539), who served successively as Bishop of Pesaro and of Lodi (see A. Chacón, Vitae et res gestae pontificum romanorum et S. Rom. ecclesiae cardinalium, II, Rome, 1630). A second seal displays the arms of the Bojali family of Bologna, recorded in the Blasone Bolognese (1791-1795). A third seal, bearing a crowned letter 'B', may be associated with the Bisconti family of Ravenna or the Larini family.

Small-scale devotional panels of the Madonna and Child form a significant component of Lo Spagna's oeuvre. Intended for private contemplation in a domestic setting, their intimate scale and refined finish made them desirable objects for the educated patrons of Umbria and beyond. An unpublished letter from Bernard Berenson to the Countess Malherbe, dated 29 June 1909, confirms the painting's presence in the Malherbe collection in Paris and records the scholar's early endorsement of the attribution, praising it as 'one of the earliest [and] certainly one of the finest that Spagna ever painted'. This work was acquired in the early 1920s by the newspaper publisher and philanthropist Ralph Harman Booth (1873-1931), who was instrumental in the transformation of the Detroit Museum of Art into the Detroit Institute of Arts, serving as the founding President of the Detroit Arts Commission and as the museum's Chief Executive Officer until the new building opened in October 1927. Booth, who began collecting at the age of fourteen with the purchase of a Whistler etching, assembled notable holdings of Northern European paintings, classical sculpture, and Post-Impressionist works, many of which were gifted to the DIA and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His son, John Lord Booth (1907-1994), who acquired the present picture in 1946 from his mother's collection, was a broadcasting pioneer and founder of the Booth American Company; he likewise served as a benefactor and trustee emeritus of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

We are grateful to Christopher Daly for endorsing the attribution following first hand inspection (16 December 2025).

The reverse of the present lot.

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SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A. (BRISTOL 1769-1830 LONDON)

Portrait of Felicity Jean Trotter (1774-1844), bust-length, wearing a black satin gown and a fur muff oil on canvas 29æ x 24√ in. (75.5 x 63.2 cm.) $200,000-300,000

£150,000-220,000 €180,000-260,000

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family of the sitter until, [Property of a Gentleman]; Philips, London, 11 June 1985, lot 36. with Richard Green, London.

Private collection, Japan, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

'Phillips: Tuesday 11 June', Tableau Fine Arts Magazine, 1985, p. 57, illustrated.

K. Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence: A complete catalogue of the oil paintings, Oxford, 1989, p.774, no. 776, pl. 23.

This portrait of Felicity Jean Trotter is a notable example of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s work from the turn of the nineteenth century. When it last appeared on the art market in 1985, it was hailed in Tableau magazine as ‘one of the finest unrecorded portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence’ (loc. cit.). The bust-length portrait depicts Felicity in an elegant black silk gown, her hair styled atop her head and tied with a matching ribbon. The dark tones of her attire are vividly offset by the rich red curtain in the background. Felicity was the daughter of Captain Samuel Swinton, R.N., proprietor of the Franco-British newspaper Le Courier de L’Europe. She married John Trotter of Dyrham Park in 1789, following the dissolution of her first marriage to Archibald Mitchelson. The portrait remained in her family until its sale in 1985.

Kenneth Garlick dates the work to circa 1800, by which time Lawrence was established as one of Britain’s leading portraitists, having completed likenesses of Queen Charlotte in 1790 and King George III in 1792 (loc. cit.). A miniature

by Henry Bone, after the present portrait (fig. 1), bears the date 1799 on its reverse, supporting Garlick’s argument that this painting was executed during Lawrence’s most productive period. Despite his success and a steady stream of commissions, Lawrence’s extravagant lifestyle brought him to the brink of bankruptcy by 1807. The sitter’s family was connected by marriage to the Coutts banking dynasty, to whom Lawrence was indebted — a link that may explain the origin of this portrait, possibly created in partial settlement of his obligations.

Although the quality of his work varied during these years of financial strain, some of his most celebrated and dynamic full-length compositions are from this period, including portraits of Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 50.135.5) and John Phillip Kemble as Rolla (sold at Christie’s, London, 6 July 2018, lot 206). The vivacity and vigor of his bust-length portraits of Emily Lamb (The National Gallery, London, inv. no. NG6617) and Alexander Mackenzie (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, inv. no. 8000) are echoed in the present work.

Fig. 1 Henry Bone R.A., Miniature portrait of Felicity Trotter, sold Sotheby’s, London, 3-9 December 2021, lot 360.

GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, CALLED IL CANALETTO (VENICE 1697–1768) Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day

Antonio Visentini, after Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Portrait of Canaletto, 1742 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

CANALETTO IN ENGLAND

by Charles Beddington

C

analetto was a surprisingly reluctant traveller. In contrast with many other Italian view painters in the eighteenth century, he only seems to have left his native city at all on three occasions. A visit to Rome in 1719-20, when he was in his early twenties, in order to assist his father in the production of stage sets for operas, was particularly significant as it was there that he is said to have been first inspired to draw and paint his surroundings. In 1742 he left Venice for the terra firma again, for only the second time as far as we know, accompanying his nephew and most able pupil Bernardo Bellotto (Venice 1722–1780 Warsaw) on a sketching trip, during which he made drawings of Dolo and Padua, several of which would eventually be used for paintings. More immediately, some were used as the basis for etchings, a medium which held a brief but fruitful fascination for the artist in the first half of the 1740s but seems not to have concerned him at any other time. Bellotto’s visit to Rome in 1742 inspired Canaletto to return to that city as the subject matter for paintings for the first time since 1720. This diversification of subject matter and adoption of new media demonstrates to what degree in the first half of the 1740s Canaletto felt the need for new challenges and this may well have been one factor which determined his decision to transfer his studio to London for an extended period. Another reason usually regarded as fundamental was the discouragement offered to potential travellers on the Continent by the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-8), which spread into Italy in 1742. It may also be noted that both Canaletto’s view-painter nephews emigrated shortly after their uncle’s departure for England, Bernardo Bellotto to Dresden and Pietro Bellotti to Toulouse; this might seem a curious decision given that competition in the Venetian view-painting market was at an all-time low, but would be explained by a paucity of clients. ‘Of late few persons travel to Italy from hence during the wars’ wrote George Vertue in his notebook in October 1746. Vertue’s notebooks are a prime source of information on the London art world in the period 1713-1754 and the five paragraphs devoted to Canaletto provide by far the most important contemporary insights into his activity in England. Vertue tells us that the artist was ‘persuaded to it by Signor Amiconi History painter at his return to Venice could best acquainted him with his success here, and also of the prospects he might make of Views of the Thames at London’. The figure painter Jacopo Amigoni had spent a decade in England 1729-1739; Vertue informs us that when, in August 1739, he ‘left England – he was about publishing a Sett of prints of Views from pictures of Canalletti’s’. Amigoni was but one of the more recent of a succession of prominent Venetian painters who had found visits to England profitable. Perhaps the most relevant precursor was, however, the Modenese view painter Antonio Joli who, having been in Venice in the 1730s, moved to London in 1744, remaining there until 1749. Amigoni’s recommendation that Canaletto might make views of the Thames was particularly pertinent, to the point that one wonders if his arrival at a moment when Westminster Bridge was nearing completion was coincidental.

Fig. 1. Canaletto, Westminster Bridge, with the Lord Mayor’s Procession on the Thames, 95.9 x 127.6 cm., 1747, (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).

Canaletto arrived in England in May 1746. As Vertue informs us,

‘Latter end of May came to London from Venice the Famous Painter of Views Cannalletti … of Venice, the Multitude of his works done abroad for English noblemen & Gentlemen has procured him great reputation & his great merrit & excellence in that way, he is much esteemed and no doubt but what Views and works He doth here, will give the same satisfaction – though many persons already have so many of his paintings’.

There he was to remain for nine years except for an eight-month return to Venice in 1750-1. Here again our most helpful source is Vertue, who recorded in August or early September 1751 that the painter had recently ‘made a Tour to his own country at Venice for some affairs there – in 8 months coming and going’. While we know that he attended a meeting in Venice on 8 March 1751, he was certainly back in London by 30 July and possibly by 24 May. His final return to Venice took place in 1755, before 12 December. While in London, he lodged at Richard Wiggan’s, a cabinet maker, in Silver Street, Golden Square, at what is now 41 Beak Street, which seems to have been the centre of the Italian, especially Venetian, community in London.

Vertue may well not have been alone among his contemporaries in wondering how Canaletto would fare in England, since ‘many persons already have so many of his paintings’. Such scepticism was, however, to prove misplaced, as the painter must have been at least as busy in England as he ever was in Venice. He was, indeed, very successful in reviving the interest of several clients who had purchased Venetian views from him in previous decades, in several cases persuading them to be very much more useful than they had been before. In order to revisit these connections Canaletto must have been helped extensively, from afar, by Joseph Smith (c. 1674–1770), the foremost collector of his work and, at least through the 1730s, the leading agent for the sale of his work to British patrons. As a Venetian resident (and British Consul in the years 1744-60), Smith was the inevitable focal point for fellow countrymen visiting the Serenissima. The English noblemen and gentry who had purchased at least one Venetian view by Canaletto and who commissioned more, often many more, paintings from him in England were Sir Hugh Smithson, Earl and later Duke of Northumberland, Francis Greville, Earl Brooke, later Earl of Warwick, Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk, George Garnier (for whom fig. 1, the view of Westminster Bridge at Yale, was painted), William Holbech and the still unidentified patron whose eleven paintings by the artist descended in the Neave family. Canaletto also attracted a number of highly useful new clients, notably Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Ferdinand Philip, 6th Prince Lobkowicz, Thomas Hollis and one of the Barons King, very probably Thomas, 5th Baron King, whose commission, the largest (and last) of the decorative schemes executed by the painter in England, included the present painting as its glamourous centrepiece. Canaletto also found time to paint three very London views as speculative ventures.

Canaletto painted thirty-five views of London, many of them involving Westminster Bridge, the engineering phenomenon of the age, and thirteen of

other English subjects. During his English years, however, he covered his full repertoire of subjects. He produced numerous capricci, which clearly had more admirers in England than they had in Venice, notably Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield and Thomas, 5th Baron King. Most can be characterized as either ‘Renaissance buildings by or near the Venetian Lagoon’ or ‘Ruins of Roman fora with neoclassical porticoed churches’. Some of Canaletto’s works of the imagination, however, do not fit into either of these categories. Particularly inspired are the two imaginary landscapes painted, like the present painting, for Lord King, which, along with a Capriccio of a ruined Gothic Chapel by a Sluice, recall, in a highly idealised manner and with some wholly extraneous elements, the character of the landscape around Ockham Park (see figs. 3, 4 and 5). When Canaletto came to England, he evidently brought with him old drawings, impressions of his own engravings and prints by other artists which he thought might be useful in depicting Italian subjects. His ability, crucial for a view painter, to recapture the atmosphere of a place at some distance from it, both geographically and temporally, is shown by a group of views of Rome and, hardly surprisingly, quite a number of views of Venice, of which the present painting is the most spectacular.

Many canvases of the English period are of considerable size. While the painter showed an inclination to work on a large scale at the outset of his career, by the late 1720s he was favouring small canvases (or, for a brief period, copperplates) for his Venetian views, no doubt in large part due to the impracticality of shipping large canvases abroad. Most of the large paintings executed in Venice in Canaletto’s maturity were for Venetian residents. During the painter’s years in England such restrictions clearly did not apply, and his eagerness to work on a large scale is immediately apparent. The vast majority of the paintings done by Canaletto in England, including capricci and Italian views, are immediately recognisable as such from their high chromatic key, the painter usually employing a light grey ground rather than the russet characteristic of his work in Italy both before and after. This technical innovation remains incompletely explained, though it clearly demonstrates his constant interest in experimentation throughout his career. In other respects the artist’s work in England shows a development of tendencies already apparent in his Venetian paintings of the first half of the 1740s, which were to develop further after 1755. Notable among these is his abbreviation of motifs, such as the way that shades of dark green are brushed, often with a relatively large brush, over khaki in the foregrounds of landscape paintings, creating almost abstract patterns. Similarly there is an increasing tendency for background figures to be composed of calligraphic squiggles and dots, a mannerism which becomes distinctly more widespread after his return to Venice. Inevitably, Canaletto was happy to bathe his English scenes in afternoon sunshine more characteristic of Italian summers than of England’s more northern climate, as he had done in almost all his paintings since the 1720s (except for the period c. 1738-42 when the light is often wintry). At this stage in his development rosy tints in the sky are also becoming increasingly evident.

There is reason to believe that Canaletto’s activity in England brought him financial rewards beyond those which he enjoyed at any other time in his long and industrious career. The only two occasions when he is known to have made investments were during his brief return to Venice from London in 1750-1 and following his final return to Venice from London in 1755. The documents which establish Canaletto’s presence in Venice on 8 March 1751 and on 12 December 1755 all relate to investments, the first of 2,150 ducats invested with the Arte dei Luganegheri, the later three of 2,200 ducats invested with the Pio Ospedale degli Incurabili. These sums are paltry, however, compared with the 10,000 ducats which the Venetian figure-painter Francesco Fontebasso had in the bank at the time of his death the year after Canaletto’s.

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION

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GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, CALLED IL CANALETTO (VENICE 1697–1768) Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day oil on canvas 59æ x 54 in. (151.7 x 137.1 cm.)

Estimate on Request

PROVENANCE:

LITERATURE:

Commissioned by a member of the King family, very probably the Hon. Thomas King, later 5th Baron King (1712–1779), London and Ockham Park, Surrey, and by descent through his great grandson, Willam King (later King-Noel), 8th Baron King and 1st Earl of Lovelace, later Viscount and Baron Ockham (1805–1893), who in 1846 moved to Horsley Towers, East Horsley, to his son, Ralph Gordon King-Noel (later King-Milbanke), 2nd Earl of Lovelace (1839–1906), who returned to Ockham Park, to his half-brother, Major Lionel Fortescue King, 3rd Earl of Lovelace (1865– 1929), by whom moved to Whitwell Hatch, Haslemere (by 1926), and his son, Peter King, 11th Lord King and 4th Earl of Lovelace (1905–1964); Sotheby’s, London, 13 July 1937, lot 135 (£2,100 to Spalding).

P.E. Spalding, USA (according to Fondazione Zeri photographic archive, no. 68887).

Anonymous sale [The Property of a Lady], Sotheby’s, London, 12 December 1973, lot 9 (£280,000 to Vincent).

António de Sommer Champalimaud (1918–2004), from whose collection sold, Christie’s, London, 8 July 2005, lot CH20, where acquired.

The Evening News, 29 June 1937.

The Illustrated London News, 3 July 1937, p. 18, illustrated.

Edinburgh Evening News, 14 July 1937, p. 6.

News Chronicle, 14 July 1937, p. 3.

The Scotsman, 14 July 1937, p. 15.

Derby Evening Telegraph, 15 July 1937, p. 4.

W.G. Constable, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768, Oxford, 1962, I, pl. 65; II, p. 338, no. 343.

L. Puppi, L’opera completa del Canaletto, Milan, 1968, p. 112, no. 256, illustrated, tentatively dated to 1746.

Advertisement in The Burlington Magazine, 115, 849, December, 1973, p. i, illustrated.

L. Puppi, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Canaletto, Paris 1975, p. 112, no. 256, illustrated, tentatively dated to 1746.

W.G. Constable, ed. J.G. Links, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768, Oxford, 1976, I, pl. 65; II, pp. 362-263, no. 343.

A. Corboz, Canaletto: Una Venezia immaginaria, Milan, 1985, I, p. 106, fig. 110 (detail); II, p. 664, no. P364, illustrated.

F. Russell, ‘A Suffusion of Light’, Country Life, 187, October 1993, p. 64.

C. Beddington, ‘Canaletto in England’, in Canaletto in England: a Venetian artist abroad, 1746-1755, New Haven, 2006, exhibition catalogue, pp. 24-26, 29, note 123, and p. 25, fig. 17, as ‘the most monumental of all Canaletto’s depictions of The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day, the most glamorous of all Venetian subjects’.

F. Russell, ‘Patterns of Patronage’, in C. Beddington ed., Canaletto in England: a Venetian artist abroad, 17461755, New Haven, 2006, exhibition catalogue, pp. 46-47, note 32.

C. Beddington, in Canaletto: Painting Venice. The Woburn Series, exhibition catalogue, London, 2021, pp. 182-183, note 15.

‘He paints with such accuracy and cunning that the eye is deceived and truly believes it is the real thing it sees, not a painting’ Pietro Guarienti on Canaletto, 1753.

This monumental view of Venice on the Feast of Ascension Day, with its virtuoso brushwork and daring design, has been described by Charles Beddington as ‘by far the most impressive Italian view executed by Canaletto during his years in England’. Painted in about 1754, it constitutes the artist’s final rendition, from this viewpoint, of a theme that Canaletto had made popular from the 1730s onwards and is unique for being of vertical format. This painting is first recorded in the eighteenth century at Ockham Park in Surrey and is a rare view of Venice painted by Canaletto in England, thus providing an essential point of reference for the artist’s years of activity in London (1746–55).

The original patron is likely to have been Thomas King, later 5th Baron King (1712–1779) and the painting remained in the ownership of the King family for almost two centuries. When the view last appeared at auction in 2005 at Christie’s, sold as part of the outstanding collection amassed by the influential Portuguese financier António Champalimaud, it had not been seen publicly for more than thirty years. Its relative inaccessibility goes some way to explain why the painting was largely overlooked in the twentieth-century literature on Canaletto. Indeed, it was not until the Christie’s 2005 sale that the picture was studied in detail for the first time by Charles Beddington and Francis Russell.

Fig. 2. Canaletto, Venice: The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, 121.9 × 182.8 cm., circa 1740 (National Gallery, London).

The view is taken from the Riva degli Schiavoni, whose waterfront paving has been set at an exaggerated angle in the foreground and looks west towards the Bacino di San Marco and the mouth of the Grand Canal. This adjusted viewpoint provided Canaletto with an opportunity to paint many of the city’s key landmarks – the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute at far left, the Zecca, Libreria and Piazzetta (with Saints Mark and Theodore surmounting columns) across the water, and the Palazzo Ducale, Palazzo delle Prigioni, and the towering Campanile at the right of the composition. In the center is the Bucintoro, the ceremonial barge of the Doge of Venice and symbol of the Serenissima, with numerous gondolas and spectators dotted around the Bacino.

Occurring on the fortieth day after Easter Sunday, the Feast of Ascension Day (Festa della Sensa) was the most spectacular of the city’s annual festivals and remained a key date in the Venetian calendar until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Accompanied by the city’s officials, the doge would sail out to the Lido on the Bucintoro and cast a ring into the water – an act symbolising the marriage of Venice to the sea – whilst proclaiming the words: ‘Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii’ (‘We wed thee, sea, as a sign of true and everlasting domination’). Here, the Bucintoro has returned to the Molo after the ceremony, as indicated by the direction of light and by the prow of the vessel

facing east. The feast brought the entire city together and enabled Canaletto to populate the familiar setting of the lagoon with lively boats and figures enjoying the pomp and ceremony of the occasion.

Given the popularity of Ascension Day among tourists in Venice, views of the Feast by Canaletto were in particular demand and several different treatments of the celebrations by the artist are known. It is particularly instructive to see how the present painting – the ‘Lovelace Canaletto’ – relates to other views seen from a similar angle, the earliest of which is that formerly in the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, sold at Christie’s, London, 1 July 2025, lot 8. In that horizontal view the composition extends marginally to the left (to include the tip of the Punta della Dogana) but crops the Palazzo delle Prigioni after the fifth (out of seven) arches at the extreme right. The larger view at Woburn, painted for the Duke of Bedford in 1732-36, completes the Dogana and extends at right to include the buildings adjacent to the Palazzo delle Prigioni (Constable, no.

332; Beddington, op. cit., 2021, pp. 175-183). The impressive large-scale variant in the National Gallery (fig. 2), almost certainly commissioned by the 4th Duke of Leeds who was in Venice in 1734, is framed like the Lovelace Canaletto at the right margin but extends further on the left to encompass the Zattere (Constable, no. 643).

Fig. 3. Canaletto, Capriccio, a Sluice on a River with a Chapel, 83.8 x 117.8 cm., 1754 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. 1993.33).

This grand representation of the greatest ceremony in Venice once formed part of an ambitious decorative scheme comprising six other paintings by Canaletto, constituting what has been described as ‘the most substantial achievement of Canaletto’s last years in London’ (F. Russell, op. cit., 2006, p. 46). The series, dispersed in 1937, remained in the possession of the Earls of Lovelace for six generations. The pictures were initially very probably at Ockham Park in Ripley, Surrey, which was extensively remodelled in an Italianate style in the early nineteenth century and severely damaged by fire in 1949. The 1st Earl of Lovelace, Lord Byron’s son-in-law, purchased Horsley Towers in East Horsley in 1840 and subsequently moved there. The Canalettos presumably returned to Ockham when the house became the 2nd Earl’s main residence again and were then taken to Whitwell Hatch in Haslemere in the 1920s, when the 3rd Earl moved there towards the end of his life. The other six canvases in the group, known as ‘The Lovelace Capriccios’ on the grounds that they

are to a greater or lesser degree fantastical, were reunited in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1989. All seven canvases are stylistically homogeneous and share an unusually light, bright tonality which befits works intended for a decorative scheme. One of the set, Capriccio: a Sluice on a River with a Chapel (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), is the only painting in the group that is signed with initials ‘A.C.’ and dated ‘1754’ on the keystone of the arch beside the sluice (fig. 3). Two further capricci in the set are in the National Gallery of Art, Washington: English Landscape Capriccio with a Column and English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace (figs. 4 and 5). Both have elements that make specific reference to Great Bookham and Box Hill, sites south-east of Ockham, and have been described as ‘the most exceptionally improbable, and successful, pictures of this type that Canaletto ever painted’ (K. Baetjer and J.G. Links eds., Canaletto, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1989, p. 259). The other three paintings in the series,

Fig. 4. Canaletto, English Landscape Capriccio with a Column, 134 x 106.4 cm., circa 1754 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. 1964.2.1).

Fig. 5. Canaletto, English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace, 134 x 108.8 cm., circa 1754 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. 1964.2.2).

The Island of San Michele with Venice in the distance (Constable, no. 367) and two capricci (Constable, nos. 478 and 504), are in private collections. As noted

by Russell, the stylistic coherence of the group implies that all seven paintings were painted in or around 1754, although it might be argued that the date on the Boston capriccio marks the completion of the commission (and consequently some of the pictures were executed slightly earlier).

records the ‘family tradition’ that the paintings ‘were acquired with money brought into the family by the [5th Lord King’s] wife’ (Constable, op. cit., 1962, I, p. 146). Furthermore, Thomas and Catherine’s son was sent to Eton, whose chapel is clearly evoked in the building at left in the Boston capriccio, lending further support to the idea that the 5th Baron King commissioned the series from Canaletto in or around 1754.

Four brothers succeeded at Ockham in close succession: John, 2nd Lord King, who died without issue in 1740; Peter, 3rd Lord King, who died unmarried in 1754; William, 4th Lord King, also unmarried, who died in 1767, and Thomas, 5th Baron King (1712–1779). The last of these ‘was a partner in a Dutch mercantile house’ (The Complete Peerage, VII, p. 277) and married an heiress, Catherine Troye, in Delft in 1734. He consequently had the means to commission a large decorative scheme from the highly fashionable painter Canaletto, and Constable

There is no incontrovertible evidence regarding the paintings’ original destination and, at the time of the 2005 sale, Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day was thought to have been the centerpiece of the series. Russell has tentatively proposed that the paintings may have been commissioned for a London residence rather than for the family seat at Ockham (op. cit., 1993). He has also convincingly argued that the present painting was more likely displayed in a different room from the two upright

Fig. 6. Canaletto, Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day, 106.5 x 106.5 cm., circa 1739 (Holkham Hall, Norfolk).

capricci in Washington, given that they are of similar dimensions (op. cit., 2006). In contrast to the other canvases in the series which incorporate some imaginary elements and combine architectural motifs ‘in the interest of the picturesque’ (Baetjer and Links, op. cit., p. 256), the view in Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day would have been instantly recognizable. Its format suggests it was almost certainly intended as an overmantel, a precedent for which is Canaletto’s square canvas of the same subject (though with a more frontal view) at Holkham Hall in Norfolk (Constable, no. 342; fig. 6). That picture was painted in around 1739 for Thomas Coke, Lord Lovel and later 1st Earl of Leicester (1697–1759), and is recorded by the architect Matthew Brettingham as hanging ‘over the Chimney’ in Lady Leicester’s Bedchamber (M. Brettingham, The Plans, Elevations and Sections of Holkham in Norfolk…, London, 1773, p. 14; Russell, op. cit., 2006, p. 46). An almost identical version of the composition by Bernardo Bellotto is at Audley End (English Heritage) in Essex.

As is evident from the 1937 sale catalogue, the Canalettos (lots 129-135) formed part of a considerably larger group of vedute and landscapes in the King collection. These included further works by Canaletto (lots 84-86) and

three views of Rome by Bernardo Bellotto; two upright (lots 82 and 83; sold in these Rooms, 12 December 1993, lot 60; figs. 7 and 8) and one of the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, then ascribed to Canaletto (lot 128; offered Sotheby’s, London, 7 July 2005, lot 51; fig. 9). There were Roman capricci by Giovanni Paolo Panini (lots 106 and 107), six landscapes by Canaletto’s Venetian contemporary, Francesco Zuccarelli (lots 119-125), and four pictures by ClaudeJoseph Vernet (lots 114-117), two of which were specifically ordered on Thomas King’s behalf and are today in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (see note in Christie’s 2005 sale catalogue for the identification of these and other views in the 1937 sale). The predominance of view paintings in the collection by many of the leading eighteenth-century artists in the genre would have represented a ‘virtual’ Grand Tour. As noted by Russell, ‘taken together, [these views] must have made a dominant impression in the collection’; particularly since there do not appear to have been any significant old masters besides a painting by Jan Steen (lot 110). The sale was widely covered in the press and the Canalettos were singled out specifically by several newspapers: one noted, for example, that ‘Lord Lovelace’s Canalettos are among the best and are fine architectural views drawn with the fidelity and richness of detail that characterised the artist’s work’ (The Evening News, 29 June 1937).

Fig. 7. Bernardo Bellotto, The Porta Santo Spirito, Rome, 98.5 x 75 cm. (Private Collection).

Fig. 8. Bernardo Bellotto, The Arch of Titus, Rome, 98.5 x 75 cm. (Private Collection).

Fig. 9. Bernardo Bellotto, Rome, A View of the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano Looking East, 62.5 x 98.5 cm. (Private Collection).

Canaletto chose varying viewpoints for his pictures of the Bucintoro at the Molo. Those taken from this oblique angle, rather than from a point further west facing the Palazzo Ducale, make for a particularly dramatic line-up of Venice’s principal landmarks. For this painting, and other renditions of the theme, such as that in the National Gallery, London, Canaletto probably had recourse to his much earlier pen-and-ink drawing of about 1734, now in the Royal Collection (inv. RCIN 907453; M. Clayton, Canaletto in Venice, London, 2005, pp. 112-113, no. 28, illus.). In the Christie’s 2005 sale catalogue, Beddington proposed that Canaletto must have taken the sheet to England with him before delivering it after his return to Venice to Consul Joseph Smith (c.1674-1770), by whom it was sold to King George III in 1762.

Though the arrangement of boats differs in the painting and drawing, the architecture is faithfully reproduced and the lateral crop of the composition is the same, with the inclusion of all seven arches of the Palazzo delle Prigioni at extreme right. Crucially, however, Canaletto has had to adapt the composition from a horizontal to a vertical format for the painting. The Campanile has been modified and its tower is visibly more elongated here, perhaps to echo the upright format of the canvas and to provide a high point of interest in the vast expanse of sky. The vertical treatment of the subject presented the artist with further challenges, necessitating the reconfiguration of certain elements to varying extremes. Canaletto sets the Fondamenta of the Riva degli Schiavoni at an exaggerated angle in the foreground, showing complete disregard for topographical precision. As noted by Viola Pemberton-Pigott, ‘it is rarely possible to stand in the presumed position of the painter’ (V. Pemberton-Pigott, ‘The Development of Canaletto’s Painting Technique’, in Baetjer and Links, op. cit., 1989, p. 54). The paved waterfront has been set at a slant here for the sole purpose of serving as a stage on which to position the principal characters.

Two Venetians wearing white masks stand either side of a boy holding a basket, an elegant patrician is seen from behind conversing with figures in a gondola below, anchoring the composition lower left. The prow of a gondola fills the compositional vacuum lower centre, where two seated figures and a dog gather at the steps which facilitate landing, alighting and the (un)loading of goods.

These individuals give the scene a sense of actuality as well as providing a platform for us, as viewers, to survey the city as ceremony.

The individualized figures in the foreground stand firmly in space. Canaletto’s confident application of paint is demonstrated in his bold description of a profile, a hand or a ponytail with just a few deftly applied strokes. By contrast,

the gondoliers gathered around the Bucintoro in the middle ground are more schematic, and the distant crowd gathered on the Molo is made up of the ‘calligraphic squiggles’ that characterize Canaletto’s later works. The painting as a whole is unusually bright; its luminous quality owing to a pale ground and Canaletto having given over more than half the canvas to the vast expanse of sky. The pinkish clouds echo the tonality of the brickwork on the façade of the Palazzo Ducale, leading the viewer’s eye around a carefully choreographed scene with deliberately positioned accents of color: what Pemberton-Pigott has described as ‘a mosaic of colour and pattern’ that is typical of Canaletto’s years in England (op. cit., p. 62). As was customary with Canaletto, the artist completed the sky first, then the architecture and water, painting in the boats and figures last.

A surprising detail is the presence of a figure in Chinese costume in a gondola in the right foreground. An analogous figure appears in another of the Lovelace paintings, Canaletto’s English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace in Washington and in other English-period capricci that were painted for patrons who had a particular predilection for chinoiserie; a fanciful style inspired by art and design from China, Japan and other Asian countries, which was at its height in Britain from 1750 to 1765 (see Beddington, op. cit., 2006, p. 24 and p. 196, under cat. 70). Since such men in Chinese costume are not found in Canaletto’s paintings produced in Italy, Beddington has suggested that their presence may be a subtle reference to the ‘magnificent new built barge, after the Venitian manner, and the watermen in Chinese habits’; a barge carrying Prince George that was rowed down the River Thames to celebrate his twelfth birthday, as described in The Gentleman’s Magazine in May 1749 (p. 235; cited

by Beddington, ibid., p. 26). In August of the same year, the Prince of Wales was seen riding what must have been the same boat, described as ‘his Chinese barge, and the rowers in Chinese habits’ (The Gentleman’s Magazine, August 1749, p.

377; cited by Beddington, ibid.). Such reference would not have been lost on Canaletto’s contemporaries in London.

This is unquestionably the most spectacular view of Venice painted by Canaletto in England. A masterpiece in its own right, the painting justifiably broke all previous auction records for the artist when it was sold in 2005. It is a supreme example of the ‘distinguished English style’ Canaletto developed whilst in England (1746-55), amply demonstrating the artist’s bravura handling of paint and boundless imagination in bringing the pomp and ceremony of the Venetian lagoon to life.

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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FRENCH, LATE 12TH/EARLY 13TH CENTURY Head of a magus or king limestone, on a modern stand 7Ω in. (19 cm.) high 11º in. (28.5 cm.) high on base $120,000-180,000

£90,000-130,000 €110,000-150,000

PROVENANCE:

M.J. Schwab, Strasbourg.

With Galerie Charles Ratton and Guy Ladrière, Paris.

EXHIBITED:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, 26 September 2006 - 19 February 2007, no. 32.

LITERATURE:

R. Will, Répertoire de la sculpture romane de l'Alsace, Strasbourg/Paris, 1955, p. 89, pl. XI. Comparative literature: D. Berné and P. Plagnieux (dir.), Naissance de la sculpture gothique, 1135-1150, Saint-Denis, Paris, Chartres, Musée de Cluny, Paris, exh. cat., 10 Octobre - 31 December 2018.

Rediscovered in Strasbourg in the 1950s, this head of a king has traditionally been connected to the north portal of the transept of the Strasbourg Cathedral (the portal of Sainte-Laurent). This attribution has been discussed by several professors and curators, most recently in the 2007 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. However, this attribution appears to be complicated by several factors.

The construction of this portal only took place between 1494 and 1505 under the direction of Jacques de Landshut, in a stylistic language that does not seem to relate to that of the present head. A second hypothesis proposed to place the present head as part of the north portal of the west facade, whose tympanum notably depicts the Adoration of the Magi. This proposition, although more logical topographically, does not seem to accord any better with the characteristics of the present work. The sculptures in situ, despite massive restorations affecting the heads in particular, are distinguished by a different style, and above all by the use of pink sandstone, the emblematic stone of the Strasbourg Cathedral, which contrasts with the material of our head. Even if white sandstone quarries existed in the Grand Est and the Vosges regions, there appears to be little to truly connect this piece to local Strasbourg production.

The stylistic analysis points decidedly towards the Parisian basin at the time of the emergence of Gothic art.

The rigorous and angular treatment of the hair and beard, ending in carefully defined curls, the prominent eyes with incised pupils, the archaic-looking floral crown, as well as the hieratic frontality of the figure, find parallels in the sculptures of the first decades of the 13th century, or even in some very primitive examples from the 12th century, such as those preserved on the facades of the abbey church of Saint-Denis.

Whatever its original location, this head was part of an important and impressive commission. Of remarkable quality, it constitutes a precious relic from the beginnings of monumental Gothic sculpture, at the moment when the rigidity inherited from the Romanesque style begins to soften, revealing the first breath of naturalism.

Lots 10–15

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THE MASTER OF THE JOHNSON ASSUMPTION OF THE MAGDALEN (ACTIVE IN FLORENCE, C. 1500) The Return of Ulysses oil on panel 30Ω x 38¡ in. (77.5 x 97.3 cm.) $150,000-200,000

£120,000-150,000 €130,000-170,000

PROVENANCE:

Thomas Stainton, by 1917.

Stanley Mortimer (1854-1932), Litchfield, and by descent to his son, Stanley Mortimer, Jr. (1897-1984), and by inheritance to his wife, Barbara Mortimer, and by whom sold, [Property from the Estate of Barbara Mortimer]; Christie's, New York, 19 May 1993, lot 31, as Francesco Granacci.

EXHIBITED:

New York, Kleinberger Galleries, Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitives in Aid of American War Relief, 1917, as 'Granacci' (lent by Stanley Mortimer).

LITERATURE:

O. Sirén and M. W. Brockwell, Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitives in aid of the American War Relief, exhibition catalogue, 1917, pp. 101-102, no. 37 , as 'Granacci'.

K.D. McKnight, 'The Ulysses Panels by Piero di Cosimo at Vassar College', The Art Bulletin, VI, 1924, p. 99, pl. 5.

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, 1932, p. 266, as 'Granacci'.

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 1963, I, p. 99, as 'Granacci'.

M. Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, Milan, 1966, p. 123, as an anonymous artist influenced by Florentine and Ferrarese art.

Vassar College Art Gallery, Selections from the Permanent Collection, 1967, p. 7, as 'Florentine, early XVIth Century'.

C. van Holst, Francesco Granacci, 1974, p. 194, no. 161, fig. 140, as 'Florentine School, 16th Century'.

The present panel was first attributed to the anonymous Florentine artist known as the Master of the Johnson Assumption of the Magdalen by Everett Fahy (see Christie’s, New York, 19 May 1993, lot 31). Active in Florence at the turn of the sixteenth century, this distinct hand, working in the refined manner of Lorenzo di Credi and Filippino Lippi, was first recognized by Gigetta Dalli Regoli (G. Dalli Regoli, Lorenzo di Credi, Cremona, 1966, p. 194). Mina Bacci later described the hand as that of an anonymous painter influenced by both Florentine and Ferrarese art (op. cit., p. 123).

This panel forms part of a narrative cycle from Homer’s Odyssey, painted for a marriage chest (cassone). It most likely served as one of the end panels, complementing two elongated frontal panels now in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, which depict The Blinding of Polyphemus and The Battle with the Laestrygonians (K. D. McKnight, loc. cit.).

As early as 1924, McKnight identified the present panel (then in the collection of Stanley Mortimer) as forming part of the same ensemble, allowing for a partial reconstruction of the cassone’s original format (ibid.).

Historically, the authorship of these panels has been the subject of debate.

Osvald Sirén and Maurice Brockwell proposed an attribution to Francesco Granacci, citing two drawings in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, which they believed to be preparatory for both the present panel and the Vassar paintings (loc. cit.). McKnight rejected this view, assigning all three panels to Piero di Cosimo on stylistic grounds and dismissing the Stockholm drawings as unrelated (loc. cit.). Bernard Berenson maintained the attribution to Granacci in his early lists but later questioned whether the ex-Mortimer and Vassar panels were indeed executed by the same hand (op. cit., 1963, I, p. 99).

We are grateful to Christopher Daly for endorsing the attribution on the basis of digital images, and for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot (written communication; 30 October 2025).

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JACOMETTO VENEZIANO (FLORENCE 1472-1497)

Portrait of a prelate, bust-length, in a black gown and beretta oil on panel 13¡ x 11º in. (34 x 28.5 cm.) $500,000-700,000

£380,000-520,000 €430,000-600,000

PROVENANCE:

[The Property of a Gentleman]; Sotheby's, London, 24 February 1971, lot 245, as Attributed to Francesco Bonsignori, where acquired by the following, with Edward Speelman, London. with David Carritt, by May 1977.

Private collection, and by whom sold, [The Property of a Private Collector]; Christie's, New York, 12 January 1994, lot 13, as Venetian School, circa 1490.

LITERATURE:

F. Zeri, 'Rinascimento e Pseudo-Rinascimento', Storia dell'arte italiana, Turin, 1983, p.

571, no. 421, illustrated.

A. Angelini, 'Jacometto Veneziano e gli umanisti: Proposta per il "Ritratto di Luca Pacioli e di Guidobaldo da Montefeltro" del Museo di Capodimonte', Prospettiva, July-October 2012, no. 147/148, pp. 140 and 142, fig. 13.

A. Mazzotta, '"Ritratti" veneziani per Jacometto, Marco Basaiti e Andrea Previtali', Prospettiva, no. 147-148, July-October 2012, pp. 153, 155 and 158, note 14, fig. 6.

This striking portrait is a rare surviving work by Jacometto Veneziano, an eminent Venetian portraitist and miniaturist. Jacometto and several of his contemporaries, including Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini, were responsible for establishing a tradition of portraiture in fifteenth-century Venice. Their innovations lay the groundwork for the flourishing of the genre in the sixteenth century by successors including Giorgione, Titian and Lorenzo Lotto. This portrait is testament to the artist’s use of meticulous detail to convey the sitter’s physiognomy and his remarkable ability to create psychological depth, inspired by Antonello da Messina’s visit to Venice in the 1470s, which exercised a profound impact on Jacometto’s work, and by the tradition of Early Netherlandish portraiture.

The artist takes an unflinching look at his sitter, expertly describing the texture of the heavy folds in his neck and chin, his bulbous nose and the thick creases around his eyes. He pays close attention to the individual hairs of his eyebrows and lashes and the highlights in his irises, and waterlines outlining his penetrating gaze. This attention to physical detail creates a palpable psychological intensity that brings the sitter to life, intensified by the strong light source that contrasts with the neutral background. These characteristics all draw on Northern European examples.

Naturalism in Venetian portraiture drew significant inspiration from Early Netherlandish painters, including Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling, whose works were rooted in direct observation of the real world and circulated widely in Venice through trading networks, diplomatic and cultural exchange, and print circulation. Antonello da Messina, who visited Venice in 1475-6, adopted the three-quarter view, strict contours and dark backgrounds from such examples, in turn exerting a strong influence on Jacometto’s work. More directly, it has been widely noted that Jacometto shared a patron with Hans Memling. Bernardo Bembo (1433-1519) was an eminent Venetian humanist and collector, who also served as Venetian Ambassador to the Burgundian court in Bruges. Memling’s presumed portrait of Bembo (c. 1474; Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten; fig. 1) probably returned to Venice with the sitter, where it is possible that Jacometto would have encountered it. Memling’s—and subsequently Jacometto’s—naturalistic approach presumably appealed to Bembo’s humanist ideals. Jacometto’s patrons came from Venice’s noble and intellectual elite, and although the identity of the sitter is unknown, his sober dress and black beretta suggest that he was a prelate.

The group of fewer than ten small-scale portraits given to Jacometto is anchored on a pair in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, recorded in 1543 by Marcantonio Michiel in Michiel Contarini’s palace as ‘di mano di Jacometto, opera perfetissima’ (J. Morelli and G. Frizzoni, eds., Notizia d’Opere di Disegno, Bologna, 1884, p. 226.). The present portrait was first attributed to Jacometto by Federico Zeri in 1983, an attribution recently supported by Alessandro Angelini (op. cit., 2012) and Antonio Mazzotta (op. cit., 2012), both of whom suggest it was probably painted in the 1490s, when the artist was reaching his maturity and developing greater psychological depth in his portraits.

Fig. 1 Hans Memling, Portrait of Bernardo Bembo, Statesman and Ambassador of Venice, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, Antwerp.

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RIDOLFO GHIRLANDAIO (FLORENCE 1483-1561)

Portrait of gentleman, half-length, in black robes and a cap, holding a pair of gloves oil on panel 33æ x 26¬ in. (85.7 x 67.7 cm.) $80,000-120,000

£60,000-90,000 €69,000-100,000

PROVENANCE:

Lord Powerscourt.

Harold Sidney Harmsworth (1868-1940), 1st Viscount Rothermere, Kent, by 1925, and by descent to his son, Esmond Harmsworth (1898-1978), 2nd Viscount Rothermere, Mereworth Castle, Kent, and by whom sold, [Property of the Right Hon. the Viscount Rothermere, and have been removed from Mereworth Castle, Kent]; Christie's, London, 2 August 1946, lot 11.

Watney collection, Cornbury Park, Charlbury, Oxfordshire. with Altomani and Sons, Milan and Pesaro, by 1997. with Galerie Canesso, Paris, where acquired in November 2006 by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

P.G. Konody, 'Some Italian Masters in Viscount Rothermere's Collection', Apollo, October 1925, pp. 188-189, illustrated.

Ridolfo Ghirlandaio was the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the most celebrated painters of the Florentine Renaissance. After his father died, when Ridolfo was just eleven years old, he was apprenticed under his uncle, Davide Ghirlandaio and later Fra Bartolomeo, who greatly influenced his early work.

According to Giorgio Vasari, he maintained a close friendship with Raphael, who entrusted him to finish painting a Madonna in Florence when summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II. Raphael attempted to attract Ridolfo to Rome, but he chose to always remain in Florence, where he established a successful career painting altarpieces, frescoes and portraits (see. G. Vasari, Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects, VIII, London, 1914, p. 61). He led a productive workshop that trained several notable pupils, including Domenico Puligo, Bartolomeo Ghetti, and Michele Tosini, who became known as Michele di Ridolfo.

Ridolfo’s portraiture combines precise drawing and anatomical definition with a psychological investigation of his sitters. Rather than idealizing his subjects, he adopted a physiognomic approach informed by his study of Leonardo da Vinci’s theories and works. This is evident here, particularly in the sitter's face, where the light traces the carefully modelled contours, accentuating the bags under his eyes as he gazes into the distance, seemingly absorbed in his own thought. The sitter was previously said to represent the great philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), and while the portrait does not take a great likeness to the younger portrait Machiavelli by Santi di Tito (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, inv. no. 9148), perhaps sitter is another public intellectual. Comparable qualities, especially the precise draftsmanship of the facial features, appear in Ridolfo's Portrait of a man in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (fig. 1) and in the Portrait of Girolamo Benivieni, attributed to him, in the National Gallery, London.

We are grateful to Carlo Falciani for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs (written communication 7 November 2025).

Fig. 1 Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a man, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.

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PARIS BORDONE (TREVISO 1500-1571 VENICE)

LITERATURE:

The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist in an extensive landscape oil on canvas, transferred from panel 40º x 60¡ in. (102.2 x 153.4 cm.) inscribed 'ECCE·AGNV[S]·DE[I]' (lower center, on the scroll around the cross) $250,000-350,000

£190,000-260,000 €220,000-300,000

PROVENANCE:

(Possibly) Gian Vincenzo Imperiale (1582-1648), Procurator and Admiral of Genoa (c.

1582-1648), Palazzo di Campetto, Genoa, recorded in his 1648 posthumous inventory, and by descent to his son, (Possibly) Francesco Maria Imperiale (c. 1606-1678), Genoa.

Francesco Maria Balbi, Genoa, 1665, and by whom sold in 1667 to, Queen Christina of Sweden (1627-1689), Palazzo Riario, Rome, and by whom bequeathed with the rest of her collection to, Cardinal Decio Azzolino (1623-1689), Rome, by whom bequeathed with the rest of his collection to his nephew, Marchese Pompeo Azzolino (d. 1696), by whom in sold in 1703 with the rest of the collection to, Principe Livio Odescalchi, Duca di Bracciano (1652-1713), Rome, and by inheritance with the collection to his cousin, Principe Baldassare Odescalchi-Erba (1683-1746), and by whom sold in 1721 with the rest of the collection through Pierre Crozat (1665-1740) to, Philippe II (1715-1723), duc d'Orléans, Regent of France, and by descent to, Louis Philippe Joseph (1747-1793), duc d'Orléans, called Philippe Egalité, by whom sold in 1792 with the rest of the collection to, Vicomte Edouard de Walkuers (1758-1837), Brussels, by whom sold to, François Louis Joseph de Laborde de Méréville (1761-1801), by whom brought to England and consigned with Jeremiah Harman, and sold with the rest of the collection to, Michael Bryan, on behalf of a consortium consisting of, Francis Egerton (1736-1803), 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, his nephew George Granville Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), Earl Gower, later 2nd Marquis of Stafford and 1st Duke of Sutherland, and Frederick Howard (1748-1825), 5th Earl of Carlisle, by whom exhibited as a group at Michael Bryan's Pall Mall Gallery and the Lyceum, The Strand, 1798, as Giorgone, and retained by the Duke of Bridgewater, Cleveland House, St. James's, London, and by whom bequeathed in life interest to his nephew and consortiumpartner, Earl Gower, with reversion to the latter's second son, Lord Francis Leveson Gower (1800-1857), later Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, who rebuilt Cleveland House as Bridgewater House, and by descent until sold, [Sold by order of the Trustees of the Ellesmere 1939 Settlement]; Christie's, London, 2 July 1976, lot 82.

Private collection, Bonn, by 1984.

Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 26 May 2000, lot 76, where acquired by, Private collection, and by whom sold, [The Property of a Private Collector]; Christie's, London, 6 July 2006, lot 33, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Birmingham, City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Exhibition of Italian Art from the 13th to the 17th Century, 18 August-2 October 1955, no. 18.

Manchester, City Art Gallery, on loan 1961-1976.

Treviso, Palazzo dei Trecento, Paris Bordon, September-December 1984, no. 23.

Inventario de' quadri della casa de Genova stimati [in] scuti d'argento, 1648, no. 61, described as 'Una Madonna con Santo Gio. Batta di etta di anni 33 in tavola del Paris Bordone 5 e 7 [piedi] scudi 200'.

C. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell'arte, ouero Le vite de gl'illustri pittori veneti e dello stato, I, Venice, 1648, I, p. 213; D.F. von Hadeln, ed., 1914, p. 234.

L.F. Dubois de Saint-Gelais, Description des tableaux du Palais Royal, avec la vie des peintres à la tête de leurs ouvrages dédié à Monseigneur Le Duc d'Orléans, Premier Prince du Sang, Paris, 1727, p. 357.

D.M. Federici, Memorie Trevigiane sulle opere di disegno dal mille e cento al mille ottocento per servire alla storia delle belle arti d'Italia, II, Venice, 1803, p. 44.

J. Britton, Catalogue raisonne of the pictures belonging to the Most Honourable the Marquis of Stafford in the gallery of Cleveland House, London, 1808, pp. 29-31, no. 21, as Giorgione.

W.Y. Ottley, Engravings of the Most Noble The Marquis of Stafford's Collection of Pictures in London, London, 1818, no. 15.

W. Buchanan, Memoirs of painting, with a chronological history of the importation of the pictures by the great masters into England since the French Revolution, London, 1824, I, p. 126, no. 9, as Giorgione.

Catalogue of the Pictures belonging to Lord Francis Leveson-Gower at Bridgewater House, London, 1830, p. 45, no.281.

G.F. Waagen, Works of art and artists in England, II, London, 1838, p. 51.

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, II, London, 1854, pp. 32 and 491.

B. Berenson, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1894, pp. 95; 1897, pp. 87; 1907, pp. 95; and 1911, p. 95.

O. Granberg, Drottnig Kristinas Tafvelgallerija pa Stockholms Slott och i Rom, Stockholm, 1896, p. 23, no. 62; Appedix III, p. 130, no. 106, as Pordenone; Appendix IV, p. 162, no. 115.

Catalogue of the Bridgewater and Ellesmere collections of pictures at Bridgewater House, Cleveland Square, London, 1897, p. 17, no. 89.

L. Baillo and G. Biscaro, Della vit e delle opere di Paris Bordon, Treviso, 1900, pp. 131132, no. 45, erroneously citing the painting in the collection of Ridolfo II. C. Stryienski, La Galerie du Régent Philippe, Duc d'Orléans, Paris, 1913, pp. 51 and 153, no. 57, illustrated opposite p. 152.

Catalogue of the collection of pictures and statuary of the Right Honourable John Francis Granville Scrope, Earl of Ellesmere at Bridgewater House, Cleveland Square St. James, London., London, 1926, p. 18, no. 89.

A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, IX, Part III, Milan, 1928, p. 1032.

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford, 1932, p. 431; Italian ed., Milan, 1936, p. 370.

W. Arslan, 'Osservazioni su Nicolò dell'Abate, Paris Bordon, Forabosco', Le Arti, I, 19389, p. 79, confusing this picture with one published by Suida in 1933 as Titian.

M. Woodall, City of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Catalogue of Paintings, Birmingham, 1960, p. 13, no. 18.

E.K. Waterhouse, 'The Italian Exhibition at Birmingham', Burlington Magazine, XCVII, no. 630, September 1955, p. 295.

B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Venetian School, I, New York, 1957, p.

47; Italian ed., London and Florence, 1958, I, p. 49.

G. Canova, Paris Bordon, Venice, 1964, pp. 55-56 and 77 and fig. 121, erroneously citied in the National Gallery Scotland, Scotland.

S. Savini Branca, Il collezionismo veneziano nel '600, Padua, 1965, p. 262 E. K. Waterhouse, 'Queen Christina's Italian Pictures in England', Queen Christina of Sweden. Documents and Studies, M. von Platen, ed., Stockholm, 1966, p. 373, no. 6.

Il Grechetto a Mantova: Fonti per la storia della pittura, Genoa, 1971, p. 56.

R. Martinoni , Gian Vicenzo Imperiale politico, letterato e collezionista genovese del seicento, Padua, 1983, p. 265.

G.M. Canova, Paris Bordon, 1984, exhibition catalogue, pp. 88-89, no. 23, illustrated.

F. Russell, in The treasure houses of Britain: Five hundred years of private patronage and art collecting, exhibition catalogue, Washington D.C. and New Haven, 1985, p. 564.

C. Mandel, 'Paris Bordone', The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, IV, p. 400.

P. Humfrey, The Age of Titian, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh, 2004, p. 146, under no.

46, fig. 128.

A. Donati, Paris Bordone: catalogo ragionato, 2014, p. 104, pl. XL, and pp. 310-312, no. 88.

ENGRAVED:

I.H. Wright, 1814.

Fig. 1 Paris Bordone, The Baptism of Christ, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

Fig. 2 Paris Bordone, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

This large canvas, originally executed on panel, is one of the sacre conversazioni painted by the Venetian master, Paris Bordone. It boasts an illustrious collecting history, first securely documented in the distinguished collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. After abdicating the throne and converting to Catholicism in 1655, Christina moved to Rome. There, under the guidance of Cardinal Decio Azzolino— appointed by Pope Alexander VII to assist her— Christina assembled one of the most important art collections in the city. Her residence, the Palazzo Riario on the Via della Lungara (now partly integrated into the Palazzo Corsini), became a veritable private museum, exhibiting about 270 paintings. Among these were Titian's Death of Actaeon (National Gallery, London), six large Allegories by Veronese (four in the National Gallery, London, and two in the Frick Collection, New York), Correggio's Leda (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) and several predelle by Raphael (National Gallery, London; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

After Christina’s death in April 1689, her collection was bequeathed to Azzolino, who himself died only three months later. His nephew subsequently sold the entire collection to Livio Odescalchi, Duca di Bracciano. In 1721, Odescalchi's cousin, Baldassare Odescalchi-Erba, sold around 260 paintings, including the present work, to Philippe II, duc d'Orléans. The collection was later brought to England by François Louis Joseph de Laborde de Méréville and sold to Michael Bryan, who exhibited it in his gallery on Pall Mall and at the Lyceum. Bryan purchased the collection on behalf of a consortium made up of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, his nephew George Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower, and Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle. The Duke of Bridgewater held the collection at Cleveland House, which was later renamed Bridgewater House when rebuilt by Lord Francis Leveson Gower, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. The painting remained with him there until sold by Ellesmere in 1979.

In Queen Christina’s 1689 inventory, the painting is described in great detail but was attributed to Pordenone. It was later called Giorgione in a 1721 catalogue from the time of its sale to the duc d'Orléans. Once in the Orléans collection, the attribution to Bordone was secured and published as such by Dubois de SaintGelais in 1727 (loc. cit.). By the early 19th century, the attribution had been firmly re-established as Bordone, without question since.

While the authorship is secure, the date of execution has been a subject of debate.

The chronology of Bordone’s oeuvre is not straightforward, as dating on stylistic grounds is complicated by the artist’s wide range of sources upon which the artist drew, often depending on the patron. In 1964, Canova dated the painting to circa 1545-1555, later proposing a more precise date of 1545-1550 in the catalogue of the 1984 Treviso exhibition (loc. cit.). However, before the painting last sold in 2006, Dr. Bernard Aikema suggested an earlier date, around 1525, in private verbal correspondence with the owner at the time. Andrea Donati most recently published the painting in 2014, dating it to circa 1545-1548 (loc. cit).

Current scholarship supports an execution date in the late 1540s. Venetian artists from Giorgione and Titian onwards frequently set religious scenes in extensive

landscapes, and Bordone was no exception. A number of such works by the artist can be used to establish a chronology. Several of Bordone’s compositions share the same serene, intimate mood, formed through soft lighting and carefully designed arcadian landscapes in which the figures are set, and, to some degree, through the stillness and composure of the figures themselves. Works such as The Holy Family with Saints Jerome and Catherine (Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) exemplify this tendency and show the influence of works from the 1520s by Bordone’s first teacher, Titian. Canova accordingly dated this group to the latter part of that decade (op. cit., p. 101 and fig. 25; and p. 109, fig.

26 respectively).

By contrast, the present composition situates its figures before a wilder, less hospitable landscape that extends far into the distance. Comparable treatments of the landscape can be found in other works of the 1540s, such as The Baptism of Christ (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; fig. 1) and the large altarpiece, The Holy Family with Saint Jerome and angels in glory (Santa Maria presso San Celso, Milan). The similarities suggest a comparable dating for the present work. Like the Milan altarpiece, this work displays a brilliant and rich palette, and robustly modeled figures, in marked contrast to the muted tones and smaller scale of Bordone’s works from the 1520s. The figures here are more animated, with a stronger sense of movement across the composition, created through their oblique postures as they lean toward or fall back from one another – thereby producing a rather artificial rhythm typical of the Mannerists. The monumentality and exaggerated musculature of Saint John the Baptist can be seen as anticipating Bordone's interest in the somewhat cool, courtly Mannerism of artists such as Bronzino, which was to characterize his depiction of the nude in the 'mythological' works of the following decade.

The figures in this painting also appear in other similar composition by Bordone.

The Madonna, for example, appears in an identical pose in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; fig. 2), another version of which is in the Malberti collection, Desio, Milan. A related Holy Family in the Muzuel Brukenthal, Sibiu, reverses the present composition with some variations. Of all these related works, however, it is in the present composition that the figures are most successfully integrated into the landscape. This is due in part to the prominence Bordone gives to the landscape and the consequent reduction in scale of the figures in relation to it. It can also be explained by the artist's handling and treatment of the landscape itself. More summarily painted and dramatically lit than in earlier works, its vast, open vista—punctuated with a solitary, craggy peak—conveys a slightly unsettling, almost 'Romantic', sense of nature as something untamed and unbounded. In its subtle depiction of the interrelationship between man and nature, the present composition may thus be considered among the most accomplished of the artist's achievements.

A copy of this picture by David Teniers the Younger is in the collection of Lord Methuen at Corsham Court.

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BARTOLOMEO PASSEROTTI (BOLOGNA 1529-1592)

Portrait of a young man, half-length, in black with a wide ruff, holding a letter in his right hand oil on canvas 21 x 19 in. (53.4 x 48.3 cm.) inscribed 'Bologna' (lower left, on the letter) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

Art market, Paris, January 2006, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

G. Poletti, 'Alcuni ritratti inediti di Bartolomeo Passerotti e i manoscritti di Marcello Oretti ad esso relativi', Antologia di Belle Arti, XXV-VI, 1985, p. 86, fig. 8.

A. Ghirardi, 'Bartolomeo Passerotti', Pittura bolognese del cinquecento, V. Fortunati Pietrantonio ed., Bologna, 1986, II, p. 555.

A. Ghirardi, Bartolomeo Passerotti Pittore (1529-1592), Rimini, 1990, p. 244, no. 71.

Painted toward the end of the 1570s, this portrait exemplifies the restrained elegance and psychological sensitivity that distinguished Bartolomeo Passerotti as one of the leading portraitists in late sixteenth-century Bologna. The sitter, an unidentified young man, is shown half-length against a warm maroon ground, dressed in sober black with a crisp white ruff. He holds a folded letter inscribed ‘Bologna’ in his right hand—a motif that recurs throughout Passerotti’s portraiture as a sign of literacy, office, and civic identity.

It was first published by Giovanna Poletti (loc. cit.) and subsequently by Angela Ghirardi who dates the portrait to the end of the 1570s (A. Ghirardi, 1990, loc. cit.). Ghirardi notes the work's relationship to the full-length Portrait of a Gentleman with Letter and Two Dogs (Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design), observing similarities in the gesture and overall compositional arrangement.

Passerotti's achievement in portraiture was recognized by his contemporaries, and his reputation extended to the highest levels of ecclesiastical patronage: he was summoned to paint Pope Pius V Ghislieri circa 1566 (Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery) and Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni circa 1572-73 (Gotha, Museen der Stadt). Yet it was in his depictions of scholars, musicians, scientists, and collectors that Passerotti found his most characteristic expression. His portraits of this period reveal an artist keenly attentive to the intellectual and social milieu of Counter-Reformation Bologna, where his studio near the Due Torri became a gathering place for antiquarians and naturalists, including the celebrated scientist Ulisse Aldrovandi.

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JUSEPE DE RIBERA, CALLED LO SPAGNOLETTO (JÁTIVA 1591-1652 NAPLES) Saint Paul

oil on canvas 30¿ x 24√ in. (76.5 x 63.2 cm.) $400,000-600,000

£300,000-450,000 €350,000-510,000

PROVENANCE:

Paternò collection, Naples, until at least 1978.

Art market, Monaco, before 2003.

Private collection, Paris and Monte Carlo, by 2003.

[Property of a European Private Collector]; Christie's, New York, 23 January 2004, lot 85, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Mexico City, Museo Nacional de San Carlos, José de Ribera: el Españoleto, 7 May-18 September 2003, no. 29.

LITERATURE:

A.E. Pérez Sánchez and N. Spinosa, L'opera completa del Ribera, Milan, 1978, pp. 100 and 102, no. 63, illustrated.

N. Spinosa, José de Ribera: el Españoleto, A.E. Pérez Sánchez and N. Spinosa, eds., exhibition catalogue, Barcelona, 2003, pp. 138-139, no. 29.

N. Spinosa, Ribera, Naples, 2003, pp. 81 and 280, no. A98, illustrated; 2006, pp. 81 and 304, no. A117, illustrated.

N. Spinosa, Ribera. La obra completa, Madrid, 2008, pp. 99, 381, no. A138, illustrated.

The early 1630s found Ribera at the height of his career. By this time, he had become the leading painter in Spanish-ruled Naples—the second largest urban center in Europe, alive with artistic creativity and a destination for painters from across the Continent. In addition to commissions from local patrons, Ribera provided pictures for a burgeoning market of international clients who were drawn to his dramatic, magnetic naturalism executed with startling originality and virtuosity. During this prolific period of activity Ribera took up a range of subject matter, including a renowned series of philosophers for the Duke of Alcalà, as well as images of saints, in states of penitence and ecstasy. Among these are also his reflective, portrait-like depictions of individual saints, or Apostolados, which rank among the artist’s most powerful single-figure compositions.

The use of chiaroscuro and the emotive gaze of Saint Paul reflect the influence of Caravaggio, who had lived in Naples between 1606 and 1607 and was key to Ribera’s early development as an artist. The decisive impact of the great Baroque master continued to be felt in the city for decades after his death.

Ribera's work captures the same taste for startlingly naturalistic representations of flesh, and for half-length compositions that pulse with pathos and emotional intensity, but with a less theatrical and more reflective spiritual approach than his predecessor. The need to make pictures that reinforced the teachings of the Counter Reformation, by focusing the viewer on individual characters from the Bible, was reaffirmed by Cardinal Federico Borromeo’s De Pictura Sacra, published in 1624. Ribera, perhaps more than any other artist of the era, excelled in producing works of such spiritual depth.

The central focus of the present picture is on the piercing gaze of Saint Paul, directed toward the sword of his martyrdom held in his right hand but also off into the middle distance outside the picture plane. In other depictions of the saint, Ribera includes a book as one of his attributes, reflecting his status as one of the most important epistolatory contributors to the New Testament. However, in this depiction, Ribera is able to convey Paul’s status as an important early Christian writer and thinker through the intelligence of his gaze, without detracting from the spiritual solemnity of the saint contemplating his martyrdom. His furrowed and drawn brow, beautifully rendered by the artist with remarkable naturalism, is further emphasized by the placement and turn of the saint’s head, and the carefully studied detail of the play of light off his skin.

The luminous and fluid handling of the drapery is entirely typical of Ribera.

A nearly complete set of Apostolados, preserved in the Prado, is considered to have been painted around 1630-32. When the present work was sold in 2004 Professor Nicola Spinosa suggested the same dating for this painting, though believed that it was likely executed before the Prado series. Another version of this picture is recorded in a private collection, Naples (N. Spinosa, L'opera completa del Ribera, Milan, 1978, p. 102, no. 63).

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ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI (ROME 1593 – AFTER 1654 NAPLES) Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria oil on panel 12æ x 9¬ in. (32.3 x 24.6 cm.) $2,500,000-3,500,000

£1,900,000-2,600,000 €2,200,000-3,000,000

PROVENANCE:

Acquired in Livorno in the last century by a private collector, Pisa (Paliaga, op. cit.), and by descent until 2016.

Art Market, Europe, where acquired by the following, with Murphy & Partners, New York, from whom acquired by the present owner in 2018.

EXHIBITED:

Oslo, Nasjonalmuseet, on loan, 2022-2025.

LITERATURE:

F. Paliaga, ‘Una Santa Caterina di Artemisia Gentileschi’, Storia dell’Arte, 129, 2011, pp.

58-63, illus. in color fig. 5.

F. Baldassari, in Artemisia Gentileschi e il suo tempo, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 2016, p. 128, under cat no. 24, illus. in color.

L. Treves, ‘Artemisia portraying her self’, in L. Treves ed., Artemisia, exhibition catalogue, London, 2020, p. 77, note 27.

C. Marshall, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Business of Art, Princeton University Press, 2024, pp. 62, 71 and 77, illus. in color on p. 64 (detail), and fig. 39.

In May 1611, at the age of seventeen, Artemisia was raped by the painter Agostino Tassi (c. 1580–1644). In the spring of the following year, Orazio pressed charges against Tassi for forcibly ‘deflowering’ his daughter, presumably in the hope of pressing for a marriage or, alternatively, the payment of a substantial dowry (see P. Cavazzini, ‘Orazio and Artemisia: From ‘such an ugly deed’ to ‘honours and favours’ at the English court’, in Treves ed., 2020, op .cit., p. 37; and S. Barker, Artemisia Gentileschi, London, 2021, pp. 33-34).

Artemisia testified at the infamous trial that followed, enduring torture under cross-examination to secure her assailant’s conviction. On the day following the verdict, Artemisia married Pierantonio Stiattesi (b. 1584), the brother of the notary hired by Orazio, described in several early documents as an apothecary, and soon moved with him to Florence, where a new chapter of her life would begin.

SELF-FASHIONING IN FLORENCE

Fig. 1. Simon Vouet, Portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1623-26 (Property of the Fondazione Pisa, exhibited at Palazzo Blu, Pisa)

This rare work by Europe’s most celebrated female painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, is one of only five known self-portraits – three of which are in museums – and quite possibly the earliest in date. Painted when the artist was barely twenty years old, it dates from Artemisia’s time in Florence, where she resided from 1613 to 1620. This period marked a real transformation in her life and career, for it was in Florence that Artemisia found her artistic voice, stepping out of her father’s shadow to become a professional painter in her own right. It was during this time that she developed into a cultured, determined, and successful individual – a period defined by her ‘becoming Artemisia’, in a phrase coined by Keith Christiansen (K. Christiansen, ‘Becoming Artemisia: Afterthoughts on the Gentileschi Exhibition’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 39, 2004, pp. 101-26).

Born in Rome in 1593, Artemisia was the eldest child of the painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639). Her mother died when she was just twelve years old and, together with her three brothers, she was taught to paint by her father.

Unlike her siblings, Artemisia was prohibited from walking through the streets of Rome unaccompanied, on account of her status as an unmarried woman, and this severely constrained her access to fellow artists and to historic artworks on public display. Despite such restrictions, she had a precocious talent and was painting independently by the age of sixteen. In July 1612 Orazio wrote to Christina of Lorraine (1565–1637), the dowager Grand Duchess of Tuscany, that his daughter had been painting for three years and was ‘without equal’ (R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art: Critical Reading and Catalogue Raisonné, University Park, PA, 1999, p. 393, note 1).

It was in Florence that Artemisia’s career really took off. No longer living under the watchful eye of her father, she gained both professional independence and personal freedom, learning to read and write. Artemisia set up her Florentine studio in the multi-storeyed house of her father-in-law Vincenzo Stiattesi (1547–1615) on via Campaccio, near the Basilica of San Lorenzo (Barker, op. cit., 2021, p. 41). From 1616, her studio was in Borgo Ognissanti, a street that was conveniently located close to Palazzo Pitti, the residence of the ruling Medici family, whose patronage she would enjoy. Artemisia met influential figures at the Florentine court, including the astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) and the poet Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (1568–1646), great-nephew of the eponymous Renaissance genius. It was Buonarroti who provided her with her first recorded commission in Florence in 1615 – the Allegory of Inclination on the ceiling of the Galleria in Casa Buonarroti. Though this picture is never described in the documents as a self-portrait, Artemisia clearly gave Inclination her own idealised facial features. In July 1616, she matriculated as a guild member of Florence’s official art establishment, the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, which no doubt expanded her opportunities for meeting fellow artists and prospective patrons (Barker op. cit., pp. 53, 56). Although Artemisia gained considerable success in Florence, relatively little is known about her patronage there, particularly during the two years immediately following her move to the city. While she produced some of her finest works in the city, notably Judith beheading Holofernes (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), a significant number of her works remain untraced.

As Barker notes, upon her arrival in Florence Artemisia had ‘to think entrepreneurially and even devise clever schemes in order to bring herself to the attention of wealthy art collectors’ (op. cit., p. 43). Keen to promote her talent in a city to which she was newly arrived, Artemisia made use of her own image and adopted various guises in her paintings. Over half of Artemisia’s known works have been identified – at some point or other – as containing her self-portrait, and there is a temptation to see her features in almost every female protagonist she ever painted. Fortunately, however, we know what Artemisia looked like from a number of different visual sources, including Jérôme David’s engraving based on a lost self-portrait by Artemisia (c. 1627-28; The British Museum, London, inv. 1913,0331.91), a bronze medal showing the artist in profile (1620s; Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher collection, on loan to The Frick Collection, New York), and a painting by Simon Vouet (c. 1623-26, Property of the Fondazione Pisa, exhibited at Palazzo Blu, Pisa; fig. 1).

Artemisia’s true self-portraits – ‘true’ in the sense of representing a literal recording of her features – are few in number: they include the present work and the closely-related Self-portrait as a Female Martyr in a private collection (both datable to c. 1613; fig. 4); Self-portrait as a Lute Player (c. 1614-15; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; fig. 2); Self-portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1614-15; National Gallery, London; fig. 3); and Selfportrait (1630-35; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome).

For a full discussion of these and their dating see N. Bastogi, ‘Novità su un gruppo di dipinti di Artemisia Gentileschi per Cosimo II de’ Medici’, in Ricerche sull’arte a Napoli in età moderna, Naples, 2021. Further self-portraits by Artemisia are recorded in Florence, including what must have been a formidable

Fig. 2. Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-portrait as a Lute Player, c. 1614-15 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT)

painting – now lost – in which the artist was dressed as an Amazon warrior, wearing a plumed helmet and wielding a sword and shield, which was described in a 1638 Medici inventory as ‘una Bradamante’, in reference to the legendary female knight of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (G. Papi, ‘Review: Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art by Roger Ward Bissell’, The Burlington Magazine, CXLII, no. 1168, 2000, pp. 452-3; and Bastogi, op. cit., pp. 95-99).

In all these works, Artemisia is recognisable through her distinctive features – her bow lips, fleshy jowl, a prominent hump on the bridge of her nose, and well-defined eyebrows over heavy-lidded eyes. Her hair in the present work and in Self-portrait as a Female Martyr is similar to that in the representations

by David and Vouet, particularly the wavy strands of unkempt hair framing her face. Artemisia was considered beautiful in her own day: in a letter of 1623, she is described ‘as beautiful as ever’ to Francesco Maria Maringhi, though this description may have been intended to gratify her distant lover (F. Solinas, Lettere di Artemisia. Nuova edizione critica e annotata, Florence, 2021, Appendix VI, p. 169). Admiration for Artemisia’s physical appearance was frequently combined with an appreciation of her artistic talents. In a poem published more than a decade after her death, the Neapolitan Giovanni Canale paid tribute to the artist ‘as famous as she is beautiful’ (cited in J.M. Locker, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Language of Painting, New Haven and London, 2015, pp. 102-3).

It is no coincidence that most of Artemisia’s true self-portraits date from her years in Florence, since this was the period during which she was intent on promoting her image and her artistic talent (see Treves, op. cit., 2020, pp. 6770). As Christopher Marshall notes, Artemisia manipulated ‘the traditions of portraiture in order to patent her own image as an instantly recognisable artist

Fig. 3. Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1614-15 (National Gallery, London)

of renown’ (C. Marshall, op. cit., p. 86; for a broader discussion of Artemisia’s Florentine self-portraits, see ‘Selling the Self’, ibid., pp. 68-91). Like Rembrandt, Artemisia took full advantage of disseminating her own image and promoting herself through her art – it was an ingenious commercial tactic and an important marketing tool that she adopted whilst launching her independent career. In Florence, in particular, there was a long-standing tradition of artists putting themselves in their pictures. Cristofano Allori famously portrayed himself as the decapitated Holofernes in Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1613; Royal Collection), and cast his mistress ‘La Mazzafirra’ in the role of Judith and her mother as the attendant. Artemisia was undoubtedly aware of this, as she knew Allori well – he served as godfather to her son Cristofano (b.

1615), whom she named after him. Moreover, Artemisia clearly understood the added appeal a painting would carry when it included her own likeness in it.

ARTEMISIA AS SAINT CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA In this intimate picture on panel, Artemisia paints herself in the guise of the fourth-century saint Catherine of Alexandria. She holds a martyr’s palm, wears a crown and embroidered cloak denoting Catherine’s royal status, and is accompanied by a broken wheel studded with iron spikes – symbol of the saint’s martyrdom and her standard attribute in art. Her right hand, delicately holding the palm frond, is raised to her chest. Artemisia’s head occupies most of the picture space, drawing the viewer into a close and intimate encounter, and the tight crop further focuses our attention on her resolute expression. The turn of her head and her pose suggest that she was working from a mirrored reflection, a pose she would repeat in other self-portraits painted in Florence; including that in a private collection (fig. 4), the Self-portrait as a Lute Player in Hartford (fig. 2), and the National Gallery’s Self-portrait as Saint Catherine

Fig. 4. Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-portrait as a Female Martyr, c. 1613, 31.8 x 24.8 cm.

(Private collection, U.S.A.)

The present lot.

of Alexandria, dating from one or two years later, where she is shown with the same attributes (fig. 3). Painting herself would have been both economical and convenient, especially since models charged exorbitant fees. Later in life, Artemisia referenced this in a letter to her patron Don Antonio Ruffo, complaining about ‘the unbearable cost of hiring models’ (‘spesa intollerabile di modelli’) in the context of negotiating the price of her paintings (Solinas, op. cit., 2021, Letter 60, pp. 154-55).

In both self-portraits, Artemisia assumes the same pose, and a recent overlay of a tracing from the present work onto the other has confirmed that she replicated her features and the profile of her neck from one panel to the other using a transfer method such as tracing or a cartoon. This time-saving technique, which she learnt from her father Orazio – who regularly used cartoons to transfer part (or all) of his designs from one canvas to another – is also evident in other paintings executed in Florence; notably the Saint Catherine in the Uffizi and the self-portraits in both Hartford and London (see L. Keith, L. Treves, M. Melchiorre di Crescenzo and J. Russell, ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 40, 2019, pp. 4-17; and L. Keith, ‘Looking at Artemisia’, in Treves, op. cit., 2020, pp. 94-96). The evidence indicates that the present work and the self-portrait in a U.S. private collection were in the studio at the same time, and she may have worked on them concurrently. Artemisia’s youthful appearance in both – she can scarcely be more than twenty – suggests that the pictures date from shortly after her arrival in Florence. Poignantly, she may even have been pregnant with her first child when she painted this work; her son, Giovanni Battista, died at only a week old on 29 September 1613 (see E. Cropper, ‘New Documents for Artemisia Gentileschi’s Life in Florence’, The Burlington Magazine, CXXXV, no. 1088, 1993, pp. 760-1). They must therefore date to around 1613 and together constitute Artemisia’s earliest true likenesses painted by her own hand.

The present self-portrait is closely connected with Artemisia’s Self-portrait as a Female Martyr (private collection; fig. 4). Both works are almost identical in size and are painted on panel; an unusual support for Artemisia, and one to which she does not appear to have returned. According to a bill from the carpenter Luca Mozetti, listing artists’ materials and household furnishings sent to Artemisia, included among these she received on February 12, 1615, ‘a small walnut panel for painting on’ (‘una tavoletta di noce per dipingere sopra detta’; S. Barker, ‘Artemisia’s Money: The Entrepreneurship of a Woman Artist in Seventeenth-Century Florence’, in S. Barker (ed.), Artemisia Gentileschi in a Changing Light, Turnhout, 2017, Appendix, pp. 74-75, doc. 6). This, together with the ‘4 tavolozze di noce da dipingere’ listed in the inventory of Artemisia’s Florentine studio – drawn up February 10, 1621 – have been taken as evidence that Artemisia used panel supports for small-scale paintings (see J. Mann, in K. Christiansen and J.W. Mann eds., Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, New York, 2001, p. 230; and F. Solinas and R. Contini, ‘Appendix 3. Artemisia Gentileschi in Florence: Inventory of Household Goods and Working Materials’, in ibid., p.

447). As Barker points out, Artemisia may have met fellow artisans – specifically carpenters – through her father-in-law’s connection with the confraternity of the Scalzo, where Stiattesi had been a member since 1589 (Barker, op. cit., 2017, pp. 64, 83, note 55). Her access to carpenters and their materials certainly seems to be corroborated by the existence of these two closely-related paintings on small-format panels.

A CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION Artemisia’s features are carefully described and delineated, the flesh tones of her head and neck modelled with subtlety, and the wavy wisps of hair framing her face are rendered with extraordinary delicacy. Saint Catherine’s attributes and, to some extent, her right hand are painted more summarily and were

Fig. 5. Infrared reflectograph of the present lot. Photo: Nasjonalmuseet / Børre Høstland

probably painted at speed. Technical imaging of this self-portrait, carried out at the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo (where the picture was on loan between 2022 until recently), has revealed interesting changes to the composition (fig. 5). Infrared reflectography shows that whilst the slightly tilted position of the head was predetermined, the back of her neck was originally exposed, like in the Self-portrait as a Female Martyr. The neckline of her dress was scooped, its edge resting on her shoulder, and this area (including the blue cloak with ornamental motifs) was subsequently changed. Her hair was originally shorter, the waves framing her face closer to those in the aforementioned portraits of Artemisia. The artist appears to have extended her hair on both sides, beyond her far shoulder and in the foreground to cover the back of her neck. The palm frond she holds in her right hand is clearly painted over the cloak, suggesting that this too was a later addition, as were the attributes of the wheel and crown (which appear almost like afterthoughts). The right hand is not as strongly modelled as Artemisia’s face, suggesting that it too was added in a second moment, as seems to have been the case for the Self-portrait as a Female Martyr (see L. Treves, in Treves, op. cit., 2020, pp. 134-5, cat. no. 9).

The composition was clearly altered to accommodate the saint’s attributes, which are squeezed in around the figure. These modifications are important, not only for Artemisia’s creative process but also because the painting’s iconography shifted from secular to religious – from self-portrait to saint – which is exactly what happened in the National Gallery’s Self-Portrait as St Catherine of Alexandria of a year or two later. Like the London painting, this work began life as a self-portrait and Artemisia subsequently turned the figure into Saint Cahterine, perhaps in response to the demands of a particular patron.

By re-using and adapting a compositional formula, Artemisia was able to quickly provide clients with variations on a design which had the added bonus of containing her own image. These two early self-portraits served as a kind of

prototype, not only for Artemisia herself to develop into the half-length selfportraits in Hartford and London, but also inspiring adaptations that may (or may not be) by Artemisia, such as the Female Martyr (Saint Rosalia?) painted on a small panel of similar dimensions (32 x 24.5 cm.), formerly in the Federico Zeri collection, Mentana, which was ascribed to Artemisia by Roberto Contini and Gianni Papi but questioned by R. Ward Bissell (Bissell, op. cit., 1999, pp.

314-16, cat. [X-9], fig. 213). The fact that the overall format was emulated implies that there was both a demand and a ready market for such works in Florence, especially for those on a small scale.

Self-portraiture has always played an important role in promoting artistic talent by disseminating an artist’s own image, from the examples of Rembrandt and Artemisia Gentileschi in the seventeenth century to Cindy Sherman today.

Demonstrating considerable business acumen already at a young age, Artemisia was fully aware of the intellectual and reputational power that her self-portraits held for collectors. She took advantage of her natural good looks and adopted a variety of different guises in her paintings. Her singular position as a renowned female painter made her a highly marketable subject and, for a short time in Florence, she became both muse and maker.

Artemisia would go on to enjoy a career lasting more than forty-five years, gaining fame and admiration across Europe and counting leading rulers among her patrons. Her success rested on her exceptional gifts as a storyteller, her powerful imagery, and the singular female perspective she brought to familiar subjects, in which heroic women often took centre stage.

A relatively recent addition to Artemisia Gentileschi’s œuvre, this self-portrait has found unanimous acceptance among those scholars who have been able to study the painting at first hand; namely Sheila Barker, Keith Christiansen, Jesse Locker, Christopher Marshall and Judy Mann, to whom we are grateful.

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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COLIJN DE COTER (ACTIVE ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 1480-1525) Saint Luke drawing the Virgin and Child oil on panel, shaped top 18√ x 10º in. (48 x 26 cm.) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

Augustin de Mailly, Marquis d'Harcourt (1708-1794), France (according to a label and inscription on the reverse).

Dr. Carvalho, Villandry Castle, Touraine, Villandry.

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 14 December 2000, lot 175, as Follower of Rogier van der Weyden. with Jan de Maere, Brussels, by 2003, as Colijn de Coter and Studio.

Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 6 April 2006, lot 18, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Brussels, Galerie Jan de Maere, Flemish Old Master Paintings 1480-1680, 2003, no. 2, as Colijn de Coter and Studio.

Full of pathos, this portrait of Saint Luke drawing the Virgin with silverpoint

by Colijn de Coter was directly inspired by the figure of Nicodemus in Rogier van der Weyden's enormously influential Descent from the Cross (Prado, Madrid, inv. no. P002825). Rogier’s famous altarpiece was painted sometime before 1443 for the high altar of the Great Archers’ Guild’s chapel of Our Lady Without the Walls at Leuven. It resided there until Mary of Hungary moved it to her château of Binche, Hainaut, exchanging it with a contemporary copy by Michiel Coxcie and an organ of 1500 Florins. Around 1555, the altarpiece had entered the collection of Mary’s cousin, Philip II of Spain. Rogier’s altarpiece was revolutionary and had an enormous impact on Northern European Art, inspiring numerous copies starting almost immediately after it was painted.

Here, De Coter focuses exclusively on the single figure of Nicodemus in Rogier's painting, producing a remarkably exact copy yet simultaneously transforming it into a new composition. Curiously, De Coter retained Nicodemus’s tears, thus defying convention to present Saint Luke as weeping. This unusual iconography suggests that the present work likely once formed the right part of a diptych, almost certainly facing a Virgin and Child. In such a pairing, Luke’s sadness functions as a foretelling of Christ’s suffering.

Only three signed paintings by Colijn de Coter, along with a pair of contracts for church commissions and a few archival references survive, defining the known boundaries of his production between 1480 and 1525. Although little is known of the artist's life, he is mentioned as a master in the Guild of St. Eloi in 1476 and later mentioned in Antwerp by Der Liggeren in 1493, as having come from Brussels. De Coter's works are recognized by his use of chiaroscuro to create volume and sculptural draperies, as evidenced by the present panel.

The attribution of the present work to Colijn de Coter was first proposed in 2003, when the painting was in the Brussels art trade (J. de Maere, loc. cit.).

At that time, both Catherine Périer d'Ieteren and Didier Martens observed workshop participation for the painting of the saint’s hands. At the time of the 2006 sale (loc. cit.), these scholars refined this attribution, dating the panel to between 1490-1500 and suggesting that the hands may have been painted by a specific member of De Coter’s workshop, namely the Master of the Orsoy Panels.

Peter van den Brink has more recently expanded upon this in an unpublished essay, noting De Coter’s astonishing accuracy as a copyist: `Every single detail was taken over literally, all the lines and swollen veins on his forehead, the beard of a single day, the headdress, the lips pressed tight together in emotion, even every single tear was copied directly after the model’. As such, he posits that De Coter may have relied on a mechanical device for the transfer, such as a cartoon. Technical examination of the painting using Infra-reflectography and X-radiographs appears to confirm this.

Van den Brink compares the present work to De Coter’s circa 1510-15 Lamentation in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 1), a painting that Périerd’Ieteren considers to be completely autograph. Van den Brink points to De Coter’s typical, hard lines, seen here for instance in Saint Luke’s eyelids, and notes that they are treated in a nearly identical manner in the Saint John the Evangelist in Amsterdam. Likewise, he observes that the treatment of the two saints’ right hands are again, indistinguishable in both paintings. Accordingly, Van den Brink sees no reason why the present work should not be considered to be entirely the work of De Coter himself.

A version of the present composition, of lesser quality, was formerly in Vicomtesse Adolphe de Spoelberch's collection, Brussels (sold, Sotheby's, London, 20 April 1977, lot 46). A third version in the collection of Lord Egerton, at Tatton Park, and attributed to Aelbrecht Bouts, depicts Saint Luke's hands folded in prayer.

We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for kindly sharing his research on this painting and for proposing the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection (Private communication, December 2025).

Fig. 1 Colijn de Coter, The Lamentation of Christ, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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ALEJO FERNÁNDEZ (GERMANY? C. 1475-1545 SEVILLE) The Burial of Saint Jerome oil on panel, unframed 55¿ x 36¬ in. (140 x 93 cm.) $60,000-80,000

£45,000-60,000 €52,000-68,000

PROVENANCE:

EXHIBITED:

The Monastery of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso, Córdoba, as part of the high altarpiece.

Diego José Monroy y Aguilera (1786-1856), Córdoba, and by whom sold in 1836 to, Isidore Justin Séverin, Baron Taylor (1789-1879), on behalf of, King Louis Philippe I of France (1773-1850), Paris, later London, by 1838; his deceased sale, Christie’s, London, 6 May 1853, lot 11, as ‘Cordoba’ (to Herman for 8.57 gns.); (the above according to A. Velasco Gonzàlez, loc. cit.).

William Graham (1817-1885), 35 Grosvenor Place, London, and by descent to his daughter, Dame Agnes Lowndes Jekyll, née Graham (1861-1937) DBE, GCStJ, Munstead Wood, Surrey, and by descent to her grandson, David McKenna (1911-2003), MBE, OBE, London, and by whom sold; [The Property of David McKenna, Esq.]; Sotheby’s, London, 2 July 1958, lot 45, as V. Civerchio (to Wengraf).

Private collection, England, from whom acquired by the grandfather of the present owner.

Paris, Musée du Louvre, Galerie Espagnole, 1838-1848, as Pedro de Córdoba.

LITERATURE:

Notice des tableaux de la Galerie Espagnole exposés dans les salles du Musée Royal au Louvre, Paris, 1838, p. 25, no. 79, as Pedro de Córdoba.

‘Galerie Espagnole’, Le Temps, 4 February 1838.

A. de Circourt, ‘Du Musée espagnol’, France et Europe, 25 May 1838, p. 103.

A. Siret, Dictionnaire Historique des Peintres de Toutes les Écoles Dépuis les Temps les Plus Reculés Jusqu'a nos Jours, Brussels, 1848, p. 293, as Pedro de Córdoba, citing the painting in the Galerie Espagnole.

E. Laforge, Des arts et des artistes en Espagne jusqu'a la fin du dix-huitième siècle, Lyon, 1849, p. 180, as Pedro de Córdoba.

R. Gracia Boix, El Real Monasterio de San Jerónimo de Valparaíso en Córdoba, Córdoba, 1973, p. 150, publishing the inventory of movable property from the monastery of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso, Córdoba.

J. Baticle and C. Marinas, La Galerie espagnole de Louis-Philippe au Louvre, 1838-1848, Paris, 1981, p. 73, as Pedro de Córdoba, citing the painting in the Galerie Espagnole.

J.M. Palencia Cerezo, Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba: Colecciones fundacionales (1835-1868), Córdoba, 1997, p. 9, connecting Alejo Fernández's Death of Saint Jerome compartment to the Pedro de Córdoba panel in King Louis Philippe’s Spanish Gallery.

J.A. Vigara Zafra, ‘La galería española de Luis Felipe de Orleáns y sus vinculaciones con el patrimonio pictórico de Córdoba’, Boletín de Arte, no. 32-33, 2012, p. 660-661, connecting Alejo Fernández's Death of Saint Jerome compartment to the Pedro de Córdoba panel in King Louis Philippe’s Spanish Gallery.

J. A. Gómez Sánchez, Alejo Fernández y la pintura sevillana del primer tercio del siglo XVI, doctoral thesis, Seville, University of Seville, 2016, pp. 346-347, connecting Alejo Fernández's Death of Saint Jerome compartment to the Pedro de Córdoba panel in King Louis Philippe’s Spanish Gallery.

A. Velasco Gonzàlez, 'Un Entierro de San Jerónimo procedente del retablo mayor del monasterio de San Jerónimo de Valparaíso (Córdoba), nueva obra de Alejo Fernández', Philostrato. Revista de Historia y Arte, XIII, 2023, p. 33-61.

Dating to between 1503 and 1508, this rare and important panel originally formed part of the high altar retable executed by Alejo Fernández for the monastery of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso in Córdoba. It depicts the burial of Saint Jerome, the fourth-century Church Father whose ascetic example inspired the Hieronymite order. Eight tonsured friars in the traditional habit of the order (white tunic beneath a brown scapular and hooded mantle) surround the saint's body as it lies upon a rustic bier of bound logs. Jerome's gaunt, aged features, half-closed eyes, and grayish lips leave no doubt that the saint has already passed; yet his gilded halo, rendered in relief in the Byzantine manner, signals his heavenly glory. In the foreground, one friar reads the office for the dead through spectacles, while others carry a processional cross, swing a censer, sprinkle holy water, and bear tall candles whose flames gutter in the wind. The figure blowing on the censer to rekindle its coals is among the most accomplished passages in the composition: the artist has captured the monk's inflated cheeks and half-shut eyes, and has allowed the glow of the embers to warm his features with delicate strokes of white and rose. Through a stone archway behind the mourners, pairs of friars converse in a monastic courtyard, while a distant hillside dotted with tiny figures and a graduated sky lend atmospheric depth.

Alejo Fernández is now understood to have been of German origin, as confirmed by a document of 1513 describing him as 'Alexo pintor alemán'. His training likely occurred in the Rhine region (perhaps in Westphalia, near the workshop of Derick Baegert in Wesel) before he arrived in Spain as a fully formed artist. He is first recorded in Córdoba in the 1490s, where he married María, daughter of the painter Pedro Fernández, whose surname he apparently adopted upon entering the local guild. Around 1508, Fernández moved to Seville alongside the sculptor Jorge Fernández, a frequent collaborator, and together they became involved in the great project of the main altarpiece of Seville Cathedral, on which Alejo worked until 1525. By the 1520s, Alejo Fernández had become the leading painter in Seville—a city where more than thirty painters were active by 1526—and his style was widely imitated by contemporaries, including Juan de Zamora. His workshop received commissions from across the Crown of Castile, and assistants played an increasing role in executing large projects, leading to stylistic variations in his later works.

The Valparaíso altarpiece was commissioned by Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Arellano (1464-1518), 1st Marquis of Comares, and his wife Juana Pacheco.

The couple had been granted patronage of the main chapel on 25 November 1502 with license to be buried there. According to the monastery's eighteenthcentury Libro Tumbo, now in the Provincial Historical Archive of Córdoba, they 'had the altarpiece painted and gilded' at a cost of 240,000 maravedís, with work beginning in 1503; a further document of 1509 records final payments. Writing in 1604, Pablo de Céspedes noted that the retable included 'stories from the life of Christ and the life of St Jerome', and that a compartment depicting the Last Supper bore the artist's signature (P. de Céspedes, 'Discurso de la comparación de la antigua y moderna pintura y escultura', in J.A. Ceán Bermúdez, ed., Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de Bellas Artes en España, V, Madrid, 1800, p. 304). In 1800, Ceán Bermúdez saw the altarpiece still in situ and observed that 'the merit of these panels corresponds to the best that was done at the time in Spain' (J.A. Ceán Bermúdez, op. cit., II, p. 86).

Following the dissolution of Spanish monasteries in 1835, the contents of San Jerónimo de Valparaíso were dispersed. Diego José Monroy y Aguilera (1786-1856), a Córdoban painter and director of the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Córdoba, oversaw the transfer of property from the monastery. In April 1836, Monroy sold several panels—including one described as a 'Death of Saint Jerome'—to Baron Isidore Taylor (1789-1879), an agent of King Louis Philippe charged with acquiring Spanish works for the Galerie Espagnole.

When the gallery opened at the Louvre in 1838, the present panel appeared in the catalogue as a work by 'Pedro de Córdoba', with dimensions of 132 x 89 cm (Notice des tableaux de la Galerie Espagnole, Paris, 1838, p. 25, no. 79).

After Louis Philippe's abdication during the Revolution of 1848, the collection moved with him to Claremont House, Surrey. Following his death in 1850, it was sold by his sons at Christie's on 6 May 1853, where the panel appeared as lot 11 under the same attribution. The identification of the Death of Saint Jerome from Fernández's altarpiece with the work attributed to Pedro de Córdoba in Louis Philippe's collection has been argued by José María Palencia Cerezo, José Antonio Vigara Zafra, and Juan Antonio Gómez Sánchez. It was not until recently that Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez identified the present panel as that very work (A. Velasco Gonzàlez, loc. cit.)

This entry draws on the research of Alberto Velasco Gonzàlez (op. cit.) to whom we are grateful for sharing his publication and endorsing the attribution (written communication; 11 December 2025).

Details of the present lot.

Details of the present lot under IRR.

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FOLLOWER OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH Ecce Homo

oil on panel 33¿ x 24º in. (84.1 x 61.5 cm.) $200,000-300,000

£150,000-220,000 €180,000-260,000

PROVENANCE:

Private collection, France.

LITERATURE:

M. Ilsink, et al., Catalogue raisonné: Hieronymus Bosch Painter and Draughtsman, New Haven and London, 2016, pp. 402, 406 and 415, notes 3 and 5, as a later 16th century copy.

This painting illustrates one of the most poignant moments in the Passion narrative, when Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, places Jesus’ fate in the hands of the people, as described in the Gospel of John (18:38-40). Stylistically and compositionally, it relates to the work of the great Netherlandish painter, Hieronymus Bosch, in particular his Ecce Homo of the 1480s (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; fig. 1) and more directly the central panel of the Ecce Homo triptych, which was produced by Bosch’s workshop around 1496-1500 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; fig. 2). The Boston triptych dates to around 1496-1500, and was commissioned by Peter van Os (d. 1542) and Hendrixke van Langel (d.

1500) of 's-Hertogenbosch, who appear on its wings. Its central panel, showing the Ecce Homo, is generally thought to have been painted a few years earlier, possibly as an autonomous panel (see M. Ilsink, op. cit., pp. 402-415, no. 24).

Painted sometime in the second half of the sixteenth century, the present panel is a faithful early copy of the Boston panel.

In the prime Frankfurt Ecce Homo, Christ appears in front of the courthouse at left, shown in three-quarters profile, hunched over and covered in blood as he looks down at the people. Here, as with the version in Boston, the composition has been modified so that Christ stands upright and facing the viewer, his hands

Fig. 1 Hieronymus Bosch, Ecce Homo, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

bound and his eyes lowered in resignation. As with the Boston panel, fewer signs of the Flagellation are visible: scattered drops of blood are seen on his shoulders and right thigh. Christ wears a loincloth along with the luxurious blue robe and crown of thorns given to him by soldiers who tauntingly hailed him as King of the Jews. To his left, dressed in red and with a conical, fur-lined hat on his head and a jeweled sword in his belt, stands Pilate, who, following John 19:4, points to Christ – the words `Ecce homo’ (`Behold the man’) are actually inscribed on the Frankfurt panel – presenting him to the unruly crowd below.

Composed of soldiers and Jewish priests with reddened, often grotesque faces, they demand Christ's condemnation with gestures and expressions conveying a wide range of emotions including rage, distress, determination and excitement.

The workshop artist responsible for the Boston Ecce Homo faithfully reproduced most of the foreground figures from the right side of the Frankfurt panel, with minor variations to the weapons and the colors of their clothing.

The throng gathered at left, however, was apparently a complete invention, added to replace the kneeling donor family that originally appeared in the prime version. In the distance, the view into a city courtyard is nearly identical in both the Frankfurt and Boston panels, and accordingly in the present work.

In the Boston painting as here, however, the view is separated by a stone wall, and the bridge with figures looking into the river has been eliminated. Instead, the workshop artist included a vignette of Christ carrying the Cross on the path to Golgotha, a scene that is ultimately taken from the reverse of Bosch’s circa 1490-95 Saint John on Patmos panel (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, no. 1647A).

Notably, the bridge appears in the underdrawing of the Boston panel, providing further evidence of the Frankfurt Ecce Homo’s primacy (ibid., p. 406).

A precise painted copy of the Frankfurt Ecce Homo is in the Mariënwater monastery (Koudewater) near 's-Hertogenbosch. Dendrochronology indicates that the Mariënwater painting could not have been created before 1524, several years after Bosch’s death (ibid., p. 228). Likewise, dendrochronological analysis of the present work, undertaken by Christine Loatelli and Didier Pousset (28-29 April 2019), determined the panel to be composed of two distinct oak boards that were felled after 1547 and most likely around 1560, suggesting that it was painted in the second half of the sixteenth century. Together, both works stand as testaments to the enduring allure of Bosch’s extraordinary imagery.

Fig. 2 Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch, Ecce Homo triptych (central panel), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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CORNELIS ENGEBRECHTSZ (LEIDEN 1461-1527) AND WORKSHOP

The Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary, Saints John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, John the Evangelist and Peter, with the sun and the moon oil on panel 24¿ x 21º in. (61.3 x 54 cm.) $150,000-250,000

£120,000-190,000 €130,000-210,000

PROVENANCE:

Baron A. Pelletier, Paris, 1885. with Weinberger, Paris, by 1931, where acquired by, Charles Nicolas Marie Hyacinthe Ghislain "Charles" Fabri (1873-1938), and by descent until sold, [The Property of a Family]; Sotheby's, London, 7 December 2011, lot 11, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

M.J. Friedländer, Altniederlänische Malerei, X, Leiden, 1932, pp. 66, 131, no. 88, plate L, as Cornelis Engebrechtsz.

G.J. Hoogewerff, De Noord-Nederlandse Schilderkunst, The Hague, 1939-47, III, p. 202, V, p. 133, no. 31, as Workshop of Engebrechtsz..

E. Pelink, 'Cornelis Engebrechtsz. De herkomst van zijn kunst', Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, II, 1948-9, p. 53, note 2, as Cornelis Engebrechtsz.

M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, X, Leiden, 1973, pp. 40, 79, no. 88, plate 71, as Cornelis Engebrechtsz.

W.S. Gibson, The Paintings of Cornelis Engebrechtsz, New York & London, 1977, pp.

265-6, no. 85, under Miscellaneous School Pieces.

J. Piet Filedt Kok, W. Gibson and T. Bruijnen, Cornelis Engebrechtsz: A sixteenthcentury Leiden artist and his workshop, Turnhout, 2014, pp. 48-49, 112, 125, 127, 199, 276 and 285, no. 24, fig. 50.

Painted by Cornelis Engebrechtsz, Leiden’s preeminent painter of the early sixteenth century, this panel depicts the crucified Christ, with Mary Magdalene hugging the Cross below. Saints John the Evangelist and Peter stand at right, with the sorrowful Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist standing at left.

In their monograph on the artist, Jan Piet Filedt Kok and Walter Gibson note that the present panel was likely intended for display in a small private chapel, and relate it to Cornelis’s early Lamentation Triptych of circa 1508, one of the artist’s two principal works, both painted for the Augustinian convent of Mariënpoel at Oegstgeest (Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden; loc. cit.). The scholars observe striking similarities between the two works, particularly ‘in the warm coloring and the delicacy of touch in the execution’ as well as the ‘detailed painting style of the faces and the costumes with deft highlights and elaborate ornamental details…’ (ibid.). The simplified landscape, with the city of Jerusalem in the background, executed in grays, browns and blue tones, is also typical of Cornelis’s works from this period. Accordingly, they date the painting to circa 1510-15, in line with the panel’s dendrochronology, which suggests a likely use date of or after 1488 or 1496.

Infrared reflectography reveals a somewhat cursory underdrawing, executed in a dry medium, likely black chalk. Though this practice is atypical for Cornelis’s paintings from this period, which tend to be underdrawn with a brush in black paint, Filedt Kok and Gibson suggest that this may be due to the fact that the composition was based on an existing model, with figures that recur in several paintings that were produced by the Engebrechtsz workshop (ibid.). Indeed, the pattern of the Magdalene’s red, gold-brocaded skirt was frequently used by the workshop. Nevertheless, they point to numerous details, especially the refined treatment of the faces and hands, as indications that Cornelis himself executed the majority of the painting, particularly the figures and landscape (ibid.), whereas the garments might have been painted by a workshop assistant.

The Eucharistic iconography of the two angels who catch Christ’s blood in golden chalices was popularized by an engraving by Martin Schongauer of circa 1475, which was widely circulated in Antwerp at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and likewise appears in contemporary paintings by Jan de Beer and Joos van Cleve (ibid.). The depiction of the sun and moon, one on either side of the Cross, was commonplace in Medieval depictions of the Crucifixion, but was used less frequently after the fifteenth century. The origins of this iconography appear to go back to Antiquity, but in this context relates to the darkness that descended upon the world during the Crucifixion between noon and three o’clock, as described in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33 and Luke 23:44). At once an expression of how the heavens themselves mourn the passing of Jesus, Saint Augustine favored a reading of this imagery as symbolic of the Old Testament (the moon), which can only be understood under the light cast upon it by the New Testament (the sun).

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED EUROPEAN COLLECTION

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ERCOLE DE' ROBERTI (FERRARA C. 1451-1496)

Portrait of Filippo Beroaldo (1453-1505), bust-length, in a black hat with identifying inscription 'PHILIPPVS BEROALDVS' (upper center) oil on panel, with the original painted reverse 14¬ x 10¬ in. (37.1 x 27 cm.) $350,000-550,000

£270,000-410,000 €300,000-470,000

PROVENANCE:

(Probably) Sir Richard Westmacott (1775-1856), London; his sale, Christie's, London, 11 March 1825, lot 22, as 'Pourbus' (1 gn. to Johnson).

Charles Fairfax-Murray (1849-1919), London.

Dr. Albert Figdor (1843-1927), Vienna, by 1894; his deceased sale, Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing, Berlin, 29 September 1930 (=1st day), lot 27, for 42,000 Reichsmarks to the following, Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), Amsterdam (inv. no. 2671), by whom sent or taken to London prior to May 1940, subsequently stored at Smith College, Northampton, MA, and returned to the following after 1945, Dési Goudstikker (1912-1996), New York. with Blumka Gallery, New York, and by whom sold, [Property from the Private Collection and Gallery of the Blumka Estate], Sotheby's, New York, 11 January 1996, lot 57, as Ambrogio de Predis, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Nouvelles Acquisitions de la Collection Goudstikker, November 1930-January 1931, no. 55, as Ambrogio de Predis.

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Italiaansche Kunst in Nederlandsch Bezit, July-October 1934, no. 300, as Ambrogio de Predis (loaned by Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker N.V., Amsterdam).

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst uit het Bezit van den Internationalen Handel, 1936, no. 126, as Ambrogio de Predis (loaned by Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker, N.V., Amsterdam).

LITERATURE:

T. von Frimmel, Kleine Galeriestudien, IV, Gemälde in der Sammlung Albert Figdor in Wien, Leipzig, 1896, p. 8, illustrated.

R. van Marle, 'La pittura all'esposizione d'arte antica italiana di Amsterdam', Bollettino d’Arte, XXVIII, no. 10, April 1935, pp. 453 and 455, fig. 15, as Ambrogio de Predis.

A. Severi, 'Il volto sfuggente del ‘Commentatore Bolognese’: Filippo Beroaldo il Vecchio tra parole e immagini', La letteratura italiana e le arti, Atti del XX Congresso dell'ADI, Naples, 2018, pp. 6-8, illustrated, as Ercole de' Roberti.

This incisive profile of the Bolognese humanist Filippo Beroaldo the Elder (1453-1505) is an important example from the small but distinguished corpus of portraits by Ercole de’ Roberti. Roberto Longhi memorably spoke of the ‘forza atavica e selvaggia del genio di Ercole Roberti’ (‘the atavistic and untamed power of Ercole Roberti’s genius’) and characterized the artist as the ‘genio numero tre della pittura ferrarese’ (‘the third genius of Ferrarese painting’), ranking him alongside Cosmè Tura and Francesco del Cossa in the triumvirate that defined the so-called Officina ferrarese and revolutionized north Italian art (R. Longhi, Officina ferrarese, 1934. Seguita dagli Ampliamenti, 1940, e dai Nuovi ampliamenti, 1940-55, Florence, 1956, p. 43; M. Giansante, ‘Roberti, Ercole’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, LXXXVII, Rome, 2016). Executed with crisp, almost medal-like precision, the present panel distills that ‘genius’ to a small scale and marks a crucial point of contact between Ferrarese painting and the humanist culture of Giovanni II Bentivoglio’s Bologna.

Ercole is first documented in February 1467 as a garzone in the workshop of Gherardo da Vicenza, one of the most active painters at the Este court. While still very young, Ercole contributed to the decoration of the Salone dei Mesi in Palazzo Schifanoia, where Roberto Longhi identified his hand in the September compartment with the Triumph of Vulcan (R. Longhi, op. cit., pp. 33-41; M. Giansante, op. cit., pp. 771-776). Around 1470, he followed Francesco del Cossa to Bologna to collaborate on the Griffoni Altarpiece for San Petronio; Ercole’s contribution is now generally recognized in the predella scenes of the Miracles of Saint Vincent Ferrer (Vatican Museums) and the pilaster figures of saints, probably completed by 1473, when the contract for the altarpiece’s wooden frame was signed (M. Molteni, Ercole de’ Roberti, Cinisello Balsamo, 1995, pp. 41, 57-80).

During the following decade, his activity was primarily centered in Bologna.

During these years he executed the monumental Pala Portuense for Santa Maria in Porto at Ravenna (now Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) and, most notably, the frescoes of the Garganelli Chapel in San Pietro—described by Longhi as ‘più gran fatto figurativo di tutta Italia’ (‘the greatest pictorial enterprise in all Italy’) from the years 1475-1485, and a cycle which Michelangelo is said to have acclaimed as ‘una meza Roma de bontà’ (‘half of Rome in terms of artistic quality’; R. Longhi, op. cit., pp. 128, 133). Although the frescoes were later destroyed, their impact on contemporaries, and Vasari’s unusually warm assessment of Ercole as an artist of ‘grandissima intelligenza’ remain fundamental to his critical fortune (G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori [1568], ed. G. Milanesi, III, Florence, 1878, pp. 141-148).

Figs. 1 and 2 Ercole de’ Roberti, Portrait of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Portrait of Ginevra Bentivoglio, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

The present portrait most plausibly dates to the 1480s, during this intensely productive Bolognese period. Its strongest stylistic affinities, however, are with Ercole's celebrated profiles of Giovanni II Bentivoglio and his wife Ginevra Sforza (figs. 1 and 2; National Gallery of Art, Washington), executed slightly earlier, between 1474 and 1477 (J. Manca in M. Boskovits and D. A. Brown, Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century, Washington, D.C., 2003, pp. 601607). David Alan Brown has noted that the present panel ‘seems likely’ to be by the same hand as the Washington pendants, a view supported by Giovanni Sassu, who observed that few other artists could ‘enhance every element of the face and hair’ with such definition (written communication, November 2020). A further comparison can be made with the double-sided profile formerly in the collection of the Earl of Powis, a work Roberto Longhi gave to Ercole in 1934 (fig. 3; see M. Molteni, op. cit., no. 26R; R. Longhi, op. cit., pp. 180-182). Indeed, the visual parallels are striking: the taut contour of the nose and forehead, the compressed yet sensitively modeled mouth, and the slightly disheveled locks of hair at the nape all betray the ‘dry’ draftsmanship and sculptural sense of volume that Francesco Filippini identified as Ercole’s distinctive 'temperament' (F. Filippini, ‘Ercole da Ferrara ed Ercole da Bologna’, Bollettino d’arte, XI, 1917, pp. 49-64).

For much of the twentieth century, this panel was attributed to the Milanese master Ambrogio de Predis, best known for his collaboration with Leonardo

da Vinci and for the celebrated profile portrait of a lady in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana—presumably because its profile format evoked Milanese court portraiture. Raimond van Marle published it as by de Predis in 1935, and Everett Fahy supported the attribution as late as 1996 (R. van Marle, op. cit., p. 455; see Sotheby’s, New York, 11 January 1996, lot 57). Federico Zeri was among the first modern scholars to re-attribute the panel to Ercole de’ Roberti, filing it accordingly in his photographic archive.

THE SITTER The inscription identifying the sitter—PHILIPPVS BEROALDVS—is probably a slightly later (mid-sixteenth century) addition, but there is no compelling reason to doubt its accuracy. As Andrea Severi has demonstrated, the visual tradition surrounding Beroaldo’s appearance rests on a small, consistent group of early sources, including the prose biographies by his students Jean de Pins and Bartolomeo Bianchini, and a handful of extant likenesses, notably a painting in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna and the bust by Vincenzo Onofri in San Martino Maggiore (A. Severi, op. cit., pp. 3-7). De Pins described his teacher as of medium stature and dark complexion, with a long, gaunt face, thin flowing hair, and a high forehead. These features, clearly recognizable in the present panel, would have sat comfortably within the humanist topos of the ‘Sileni of Alcibiades’—the wise man whose outward plainness conceals inner brilliance

(J. de Pins, Divae Catherinae Senensis simul et clarissimi viri Philippi Beroaldi Bononiensis vita, Bologna, Benedetto d’Ettore Faelli, 1505; A. Severi, op. cit., pp.

3-4).

The sitter was among the most renowned intellectuals of his generation. Born in Bologna on 7 November 1453 into a noble family, Beroaldo lost his father at the age of four and was educated under the care of his mother, Giovanna Casto.

After early schooling with local masters, he studied under Francesco Puteolano (Francesco dal Pozzo) of Parma, whose pioneering work as an editor of Ovid, Catullus, and Tacitus he later acknowledged with gratitude in both his Oratio proverbiorum (1499) and his commentary on Apuleius (1500; M. Gilmore, ‘Beroaldo, Filippo (senior)’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, IX, Rome, 1967, pp. 382-384). In 1472, at only nineteen, Beroaldo was appointed professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Bologna. Three years later he left for Parma, where he oversaw the printing of his notes on the first book of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia (1476), before traveling to Milan and Paris.

His brief tenure at the University of Paris (1476-77), where he taught to packed halls and dedicated an Oratio in laudibus Gymnasii Parisiorum to Louis de Rochechouart (Vicomte de Rochechouart, a prominent councillor of Louis XI and Charles VIII), helped disseminate Petrarchan and Ficinian currents of thought north of the Alps. It also forged friendships with figures such as Robert Gaguin and Jean de Pins that would frame his European reputation (see A. Renaudet, Préréforme et humanisme à Paris pendant les premières guerres d’Italia, Paris, 1953). Repeatedly recalled by his alma mater, Beroaldo finally returned to Bologna in 1479, remaining there until his death in 1505 and teaching with such success that contemporaries attested to his unusually large and international following (E. Garin, ‘Sulle relazioni tra Poliziano e Filippo Beroaldo il Vecchio’, La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano, Florence, 1961, pp. 359-363).

Over the course of his career, Beroaldo edited and annotated over twenty classical authors—including Apuleius, Cicero, Juvenal, Lucan, Pliny the Elder, Propertius, and Suetonius—and exploited the emergent technology of print to disseminate his lectures from Bologna to Venice, Lyon, Leipzig, and Paris.

His Commentarii on Apuleius’s Metamorphoses ('The Golden Ass'), with their moralizing and at times Christological reading of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, enjoyed particular success. This text helped shape later sixteenth-century visual interpretations of the myth, influencing fresco cycles by Raphael and Giulio Romano (M. Gilmore, op. cit., pp. 382-384).

Far from being a cloistered scholar, Beroaldo was deeply enmeshed in the civic and courtly life of Bentivoglio Bologna. After what his early biographers describe as a somewhat ‘licentious’ youth, he married Camilla Paleotti in 1498 and celebrated the virtues of marriage in a famous digression in his Apuleius commentary. He served as one of the city’s Elders in 1489, acted repeatedly as public orator and ambassador, and accompanied one of Giovanni II Bentivoglio’s sons to Rome in 1492 on an embassy to Pope Alexander VI. In 1502, he was among the four doctors charged with exhorting the citizens to defend Bologna against Cesare Borgia—a poignant episode that ties him directly to the final, precarious phase of Bentivoglio rule. Pico della Mirandola nicknamed him a ‘libreria vivente’ (‘living library’), and Erasmus, writing in 1523, recalled him as a celebrated figure, even as he subjected Beroaldo’s ornate Latin to the critical standards he applied to other ‘Ciceronians’ (M. Gilmore, op. cit., p. 384).

THE PROVENANCE While the early provenance of the present portrait is unknown, it is plausible, as Severi has suggested, that it once formed part of a wider ‘uomini illustri’ series, perhaps in a studiolo or a Bentivoglio palace, of the kind that would later be codified in Paolo Giovio’s celebrated collection of portraits (A. Severi, op. cit., pp. 6-7; G. Gandolfi, Imagines Illustrium Virorum. La collezione dei ritratti dell’Università e della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, Bologna, 2010).

By 1894, the portrait had entered the celebrated Viennese collection of Dr. Albert Figdor (1843-1927). Born into a prosperous Jewish banking family with Hungarian roots, Figdor trained as a lawyer before joining his family's firm, where his interests included financing the construction of the Gotthard

Fig. 3 Ercole de’ Roberti, Portrait of a Young Gentleman, possibly Annibale Bentivoglio (recto), present location unknown.

Railway. Following his father's death in 1876, he retired from business to devote himself entirely to collecting. Unlike many contemporaries, Figdor pursued no institutional ambition; what mattered was that each object possess, as he put it, a certain 'special something'— both cultural significance and aesthetic charm.

His holdings, which contemporaries regarded as the largest private collection in Europe, encompassed paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and some three hundred pieces of furniture, as well as one of the finest Judaica collections on the continent (G. Glück, 'Dr. Albert Figdor und seine Sammlung', Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, LXI, 1928, p. 252). Among the most celebrated objects was the so-called Strozzi Sgabello, a Florentine chair of about 1489-91 that Figdor had acquired from Prince Strozzi in the 1870s and which Hans Stegmann described as 'a unicum known the world over...a masterwork of charming beauty, one of the most beautiful Florentine pieces of furniture around' (H. Stegmann, Die Holzmöbel der Sammlung Figdor, Vienna, 1907; now Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). After his death, a protracted legal dispute between his heir, Margarethe Becker-Walz, and the Austrian state (which sought to prevent the collection's export under monument protection legislation) culminated in its dispersal at auction, first in Vienna with Artaria and Glückselig on 11-13 June 1930, and subsequently in Berlin with Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing on 2930 September of that year. The sale was catalogued in five substantial volumes by eminent scholars including Max J. Friedländer for the paintings and Leo Planiscig for the sculpture.

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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CIRCLE OF DONATELLO (1386-1466), FLORENTINE, MID-15TH CENTURY Head of a young man terracotta, on a modern stand 11¡ in. (28.9 cm.) high 15Ω in. (39.5 cm.) high on base $70,000-100,000

£53,000-75,000 €60,000-85,000

PROVENANCE:

Mrs. Charles Henry Coster.

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 15 July 1986, lot 21, where acquired after the sale by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

Comparative Literature: C. Avery, Donatello – Catalogo complete delle Opere, Florence, 1991.

J. Pope-Hennessy, Donatello – Sculptor, New York, London and Paris, 1993.

Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi (1386 or 1387 – 1466) – popularly known as Donatello, was one of the most important proponents of the early Renaissance in Florence. Versatile in a number of different media, he was able to produce monumental free-standing marbles and intimate bronze reliefs. His works display an enormous empathy for his subjects and he was consistently able to convey a strong narrative through his compositions, and details which were often picked out with only a deft mark of the chisel or stylus. His knowledge - and re-interpretation - of classical sources meant he was one of the most innovative artists of his day.

The present terracotta head of a youth is a rare survival from Donatello’s artistic milieu. It appears to have been hand-modelled, with details such as the eyebrows incised into the terracotta, probably while it was in its ‘leather’ state. It is also apparent that the distinctive flame-like locks of hair were applied to a pre-existing head. The join between the hair and the scalp would be a natural point of weakness and it is likely that the hair toward the front of the head came off at the same time as the damage to the nose and chin. The fact that these hand-modeled details exist suggest that this is a unique piece.

Donatello had a long and prolific career and details of the present head recall various of his works over the decades from the 1410s to the 1450s. Among these, one might look to the marble figure of St George, commissioned circa 1414 for a niche on the façade of the Orsanmichele in Florence (now Bargello; for images see Pope-Hennessy, op. cit., figs. 32-37). His youthful beauty, curls of hair, voluptuous lips and slight air of expectancy all find parallels in the present head. Similarly, the gilt-bronze reliquary bust of St. Rossore of circa 1426-27 (see ibid., pp. 71-73 and fig. 63) displays a very similar shape to the head, delineation of the eyes and classicizing hair style. Finally, Donatello’s masterpiece of circa 1447-1553, the equestrian bronze monument known as the Gattamelata (Piazza del Santo, Padua), finds parallels in the present lot including the thickly modelled curls of hair and even the unusual detail of lines incised into the upper eyelids to suggest eyelashes.

It seems clear that the author of this idealized image of youthful male beauty had direct knowledge of the innovations being introduced by Donatello and was deeply influenced by them. It remains a fragile glimpse into the artistic world of Florence in the middle of the 15th century.

PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED LADY

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ALESSANDRO FILIPEPI, CALLED SANDRO BOTTICELLI (FLORENCE 1445-1510) AND STUDIO

The Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist tempera and oil on panel 35¡ x 28¬ in. (89.8 x 72.7 cm.) $4,000,000-6,000,000

£3,000,000-4,500,000 €3,500,000-5,100,000

PROVENANCE:

LITERATURE:

William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844), Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire.

E.J. de Bammeville; Christie's, London, 12 June 1854, lot 51, as Sandro Botticelli, where acquired for 520 gns. by, Alexander Barker (1797-1873), London; his deceased sale; Christie's, London, 6 June 1874, lot 91, as Sandro Botticelli, where acquired for 1,680 gns. by, Mme Brooks, Paris, by whom sold; [Anonymous sale], Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 16 April 1877, lot 98, as Sandro Botticelli (12,000 francs).

John Osmaston, formerly John Wright (1831-1901), Osmaston Manor, Derbyshire, by 1879.

Frederick Richards Leyland (1831-1892), Liverpool; his deceased sale, Christie's, London, 28 May 1892, lot 91, as Sandro Botticelli (1,250 gns. to Colnaghi).

Vernon James Watney (1860-1928), Cornbury Park, Charlbury, Oxfordshire, by descent to his daughter, Silvia Katharine Watney, later Mrs. Mowbray Buller (1896-1966), by descent to her daughter, Ruth Silvia Buller (1927-1995), by whom sold; [The Property of Miss Ruth S. Buller], Christie's, London, 1 July 1966, lot 54, as Workshop of Sandro Botticelli, with Giovanni Salocchi, Florence. with Vittorio Frascione, Florence, 1967.

Acquired by the present owner in the late 1960s; her collection, Switzerland, New York and France.

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London, 1854-56, II, p. 127, as Botticelli.

H. Ulmann, Sandro Botticelli, Munich, 1893, pp. 127 and 152, no. 48, as workshop.

G.N. Plunkett, Sandro Botticelli, London, 1900, p. 102, as workshop.

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A history of painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the 2nd to the 16th century, London, 1911, IV, p. 266, as Botticelli.

Y. Yashiro, Sandro Botticelli, London, 1925, I, p. 237, as workshop.

R. Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague, 1931, XII, pp. 236-237, as school of Botticelli.

'Florenz bestätigt seine Vitalität als Kunststadt: Zur 5. Biennale der Antiquitätenmesse im Palazzo Strozzi,' Weltkunst, XXXVII, no. 20, October 1967, p. 964, illustrated.

R.W. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli: Life and work, Berkeley, 1978, II, pp. 127, under no.

C22, as workshop.

H.P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence, Appendix III, Florence, 1987, p. 43, no. 102, as School of Botticelli.

N. Pons, Botticelli: catalogo completo, Milan, 1989, p. 79, p. 79, under no. 85.

R. Hiller von Gaertringen, Italienische Gemälde im Städel 1300-1550: Toskana und Umbrien, Mainz, 2004, pp. 348, 350 and 353, notes 18, 30 and 31.

M. Evans in, The Botticelli Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Munich and London, 2015, p. 276, under no. 126.

M. Evans in, Botticelli Reimagined, exhibition catalogue, London, 2016, p. 276, under no. 126.

EXHIBITED:

London, British Institution, 1858, no. 29, as Sandro Botticelli (lent by Barker).

London, British Institution, 1860, no. 115, as Sandro Botticelli (lent by Barker).

London, Royal Academy, Burlington House, Winter Show, 1879, no. 194, as Sandro Botticelli (lent by Osmaston).

Fig. 1 Sandro Botticelli, The Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Fig. 2 Sandro Botticelli, The Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.

This majestic, colorful panel represents the Virgin Mary seated at a lectern, embracing the Christ Child, who stands on her lap. A paragon of Renaissance beauty, the Virgin wears a red gown beneath a blue, gold-embroidered cloak with a green lining. Her long, golden tresses are covered with a diaphanous veil with delicate lace-work along its fringes. The Christ Child, dressed in a gauzy tunic edged with a gold pattern, gazes up at his mother as he pulls her cheek toward his. The Young Saint John the Baptist – the patron saint of Florence – stands in adoration at left. Dressed in his camel-hair raiment and a bright red cloak, he pledges devotion to his cousin. The three holy figures appear before a typical Florentine pietra serena arch and pilaster, overlooking a light-blue sky peppered with a few clouds. Depicting a subject that was popular in Botticelli’s native Florence, this panel was likely intended as an object of personal devotion, and perhaps was originally installed within a private family chapel.

As scholars have long recognized, the core of this composition relates to one of Botticelli’s earliest treatments of the Madonna: the circa 1468 Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist in the Louvre, Paris (fig. 1), a painting in which some also see workshop participation in certain parts, particularly the figure of the Baptist (see R. Lightbown, 1978, op. cit., p. 18, no.

B1). Set before a rose garden, the figures in this early work remain strongly indebted to Filippo Lippi. This painting must have been very well-received as Botticelli adapted it on numerous occasions throughout his career.

Our painting belongs to a group of four compositional variants of the Louvre picture, of which the present work and the version in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (fig. 2) are generally agreed to be the strongest examples. As with the present painting, the question of workshop participation in the Dresden Madonna has been a matter of debate, though recent technical examination of the painting under the direction of Christoph Schölzel, together with its high quality, has led the museum to conclude it to be autograph and datable to around 1495-1500 (C. Schölzel, et al., Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Bestandskatalog Italienische Gemälde des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts. Band I: Die Maltechnik, S. Koja, ed., Cottbus,

2023, pp. 219-22, no. 33). Other examples, all considered to be products of the workshop, include paintings in the Sala di Penelope, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and one formerly in the Widmann collection, Monaco and now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt (see B. Eclercy in A. Schumacher, ed., Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt am Main, 2009, p. 326). There are also workshop variants without Saint John, one of the best of which is in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG782).

Having remained in the same private collection since it was acquired over half a century ago, the present painting has largely been inaccessible to scholars and has only recently been the subject of serious art historical and technical study. It was first published in 1854 when it was in the Beckford collection at Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, by Gustav Waagen, who considered it to be fully autograph, describing it as `Very nobly conceived, and admirably executed in a tone of colouring unusually warm for him’ (loc. cit.). This attribution was followed by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (loc. cit.), though Hermann Ulmann (loc. cit.), George Noble Plunckett (loc. cit.) and Yukio Yashiro (loc. cit.) catalogued it as workshop. Roland Lightbown (loc. cit.) published it as a version of the Dresden painting, without commenting on the extent of Botticelli’s participation.

On the basis of firsthand examination aided by study of the painting’s underdrawing using infrared reflectography, Laurence Kanter, Keith Christiansen, and Christopher Daly, now consider the work to be by Botticelli with the assistance of his workshop (Kanter viewed the painting on 13 November 2025; Christiansen and Daly each viewed the painting on 19 November 2025). Nicoletta Pons, on the basis of photographs, concurs with this attribution (written communication, 12 December 2025). Kanter dates the Dresden panel to the early 1480s. Noting the more linear treatment of form and increased use of strong outlines, he suggests a somewhat later date for the present painting, of around 1488-90. Daly essentially agrees, dating the Dresden panel to the early to mid-1480s, and the present work to the early to mid-1490s.

Christiansen would not eliminate a date for the present work as late as 1500.

Fig. 3 IRR of the present lot.

Fig. 4 James Wyatt and attributed to J.M.W. Turner, Projected design for Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

As all of these scholars have observed, by the late 1480s Botticelli was running a highly successful workshop such that the majority of works he produced were, inevitably, executed with a degree of collaboration. Following Botticelli’s established practice, an assistant would have transferred the composition from a cartoon and blocked in the basic outline underdrawing with templates. Certain details, such as the figures’ heads, could be rotated at this stage as needed to create individualized compositions. Botticelli would then have embellished this with a brushed underdrawing. Indeed, infrared reflectography of the present painting (fig. 3) reveals a beautiful underdrawing, with confident brushwork featuring scrolling, fluid lines indicative of Botticelli’s own hand. Finer line drawing is also visible, revealing where the artist refined the forms with various pentimenti. Notable adjustments include changes to the positions of the Virgin’s hands, particularly all of the fingers on her left hand and several drapery folds, most evident along Christ’s back. Botticelli also appears to have experimented with depicting the Virgin’s prayerbook lying open on the table, though this compositional motif was ultimately abandoned. Curiously, both the Dresden panel and the present work have incised lines corresponding to the arch at upper left as well as a second arch just above the Virgin’s head. The purpose of this second arch remains unclear. Perhaps it corresponds to instructions relating to an architectural motif noted on the original cartoon that were followed by Botticelli’s assistants during the transfer process but then rejected on both occasions by Botticelli himself.

A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE

distinguished pieces: the superb Crucifixion (Manchester, City Art Gallery), then and until recently attributed to Duccio (265 guineas); and the now rather underrated Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by Lorenzo da Sanseverino, for which the National Gallery paid 375 guineas, and two Madonnas by Botticelli, including the present work, which was acquired by Alexander Barker for the then unprecedented sum of 520 guineas.

Considered to be one of the most enlightened collectors in England, Barker amassed a celebrated collection of decorative arts and paintings, including Botticelli’s Mars and Venus, Piero della Francesca’s Nativity and Luca Signorelli’s Triumph of Chastity: Love Disarmed and Bound (all today in the National Gallery, London), as well as Botticelli’s Casa Pucci scenes from the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, several panels of which are today in the Prado, Madrid.

The last of these paintings were eventually acquired, along with the present painting, by the Liverpool ship-owner Frederick Richards Leyland, the great patron of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. By the late 1860s, Leyland began seeking out works by the Pre-Raphaelites and the Italian Masters. In this he was advised by Rossetti and two dealers Murray Marks (1840-1918) and Charles Augustus Howell (1840-1890), under whose aegis he built up an outstanding collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque pictures.

Guided by Marks and the architects Norman Shaw and Thomas Jeckyll, he created two of the grandest aesthetic interiors of the 1870s and 1880: 22 Queen’s Gate and 49 Prince’s Gate. The house at Prince’s Gate is best known for James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room (Harmony in Blue and Gold; Freer Art Gallery, Washington D.C.).

In the 19th century, the painting was in the English collection of William Beckford at the ill-fated Fonthill Abbey, which was designed by James Wyatt and completed in 1807 (fig. 4). Beckford was the only son of Alderman William Beckford, MP (1709-70), and inherited a massive fortune derived from his family’s Jamaican plantations. He acquired a significant art collection during his travels throughout Europe, and was a great admirer of Botticelli, owning a significant number of his 92 surviving illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Over twenty works from his collection were acquired by London’s National Gallery, including Raphael’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan, and Velázquez’s Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver. To finance his extravagant and sometimes scandalous lifestyle, he was compelled to sell many works from his collection during his lifetime, including William Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress (Soane Museum, London).

The next owner, Vernon J. Watney, was the heir of the celebrated family of brewers, and in 1891 married Lady Margaret Wallop, fifth daughter of Isaac, 5th Earl of Portsmouth. He acquired Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire and built up an outstanding collection of pictures which was kept there and at his London residence, 11 Berkeley Square. Many paintings in the collection were assembled in the 1890s, partly at sales at Christie's and partly from dealers and agents, such as Sir George Donaldson, and included such masterpieces as Botticelli's Marriage Feast of Nastagio degli Onesti (as with the present painting, acquired from the Leyland collection) and two panels by Juan de Flandes, the Temptation now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Marriage at Cana, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Linsky collection.

The painting is next recorded in the remarkable collection of E. Joly de Bammeville, which was sold at Christie’s in 1854. Like many of his contemporaries, Joly de Bammeville had a strong interest in early Italian pictures and bought with great discrimination in the field, owning, among other

We are grateful to Laurence Kanter, Christopher Daly, and Keith Christiansen who have confirmed the attribution and Nicoletta Pons for endorsing the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection, and to Nicoletta Pons, who confirmed the attribution on the basis of digital images.

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ALESSANDRO ALLORI (FLORENCE 1535-1607)

Portrait of a gentleman, possibly Don Antonio de' Medici (1576-1621), half-length, in a landscape oil on panel 42 x 33º in. (106.7 x 84.4 cm.), with later additions of circa Ω in. (1.2 cm.) to the vertical edges $200,000-300,000

£150,000-220,000 €180,000-260,000

PROVENANCE:

Maria Luisa de Rochechouart-Mortemart, née Borghese (1812-1838), and by descent to her son, François de Rochechouart-Mortemart, Duc de Mortemart (1832-1893), and by descent to his daughter, Jeanne de la Rochefoucauld, née De Rochechouart-Mortemart (1864-1924), who married Alexandre de la Rochefoucauld, Duc d’Estissac (1854-1930) in 1883.

(Possibly) with Bellesi, Florence. with Charles Michel (1871-1948), Paris, 1942, as 'Bronzino', where acquired in February 1943 for FF 4,000,000 with a ‘pendant’ portrait (Paris, Louvre, inv. MNR 800), through E. Garin, Paris, by, Karl Haberstock, Berlin and intended for Hitler’s Führermuseum, Linz (inv. no. 27414), as 'Imitator of Bronzino', deposited in the salt mines in Altaussee in Austria (Inv. no. 3910) for safekeeping.

Munich Central Collecting Point, 10 October 1945 (inv. no. 8663; as 'Imitator of Agnolo Bronzino').

Repatriated to the French authorities, 3 June 1948, and later sold by the Commissaire aux ventes, Colombier André, on 27 April 1950.

Hahn Collection, London, by 1950.

Private collection, London (?), by 1953.

Morris I. Kaplan, Chicago; his deceased sale, Sotheby’s, London, 12 June 1968, lot 1, as Attributed to Alessandro Allori, where acquired by, Dr. Charles R. Winter (1923-2013) and Anita B. Winter (1938-2020), and by whose estate sold, [Property from the Estate of Dr. Charles and Anita Winter]; Sotheby's, New York, 25 May 2022, lot 3, as Manner of Alessandro Allori, where withdrawn and acquired before the sale by the present owner.

conflicting elements coexist: in painting the almost-white doublet, Allori employs rapid brushstrokes to animate the ripples and shadows of the fabric, while the gold-embroidered orange lozenges and dark tones of the slashed openings are rendered with painterly freedom. At the same time, Flemish precision is manifest in the articulated landscape composed of windswept trees, rocky gorges, and waving clouds, as well as in the broad lace collar whose bright form frames the young man's face. These stylistic traits can be compared with works securely datable to the late 1580s and early 1590s, notably The Temptation of Saint Benedict (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), in which the landscape is similar both in overall design and in the execution of the foliage, seemingly painted leaf by leaf.

The young man appears to be between fifteen and sixteen years of age, depicted still beardless with a thin moustache. If the dating to the early 1590s is correct, a plausible identification may be made with Don Antonio de' Medici (15761621), the illegitimate son of Grand Duke Francesco I and Bianca Cappello.

Born just two years before the death of Giovanna d'Austria, Francesco's lawful wife, Antonio was only legitimized by his father in 1584. However, following Francesco I's sudden death in October 1587, the young Antonio’s prospects of becoming heir apparent were quickly undermined by his uncle, Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, who cast doubt on his paternity and compelled him to enter the Order of the Knights of Malta in 1594. Significantly, the sitter here wears no Maltese cross, suggesting the portrait predates Antonio's investiture. A comparison with later portraits of Don Antonio, including one by an unknown artist at the Villa Medicea di Cerreto Guidi and the portrait by Domenico and Valore Casini of circa 1610-15 (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence), reveals consistent physiognomic features, particularly the high forehead and elongated eyes.

A smaller, half-length version of this composition, without the landscape, is in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (inv. MASP.00022; fig. 1). That panel has been attributed to Allori's studio and may represent either a preparatory model or a record of the larger, more finished painting. Such practices were common in Bronzino's workshop, where smaller variants served as 'memory' images of sitters' physiognomies.

This arresting portrait shows a young man dressed in sumptuous clothing, standing with his left hand resting on his sword and his right arm draped around the head of a dog. The sitter's pose follows sixteenth-century Florentine courtly conventions that hark back to illustrious prototypes by Bronzino, such as the Portrait of Guidobaldo della Rovere (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) or the Portrait of Bartolomeo Panciatichi (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), models that were certainly known to Alessandro Allori, Bronzino's adopted son and principal heir to his artistic legacy.

The present lot was formerly paired with a female portrait of similar dimensions (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. MNR 800; fig. 2). Both paintings descended through the French aristocratic families of Rochechouart-Mortemart and La Rochefoucauld before passing through the Paris art market during the Second World War. Acquired from the dealer Charles Michel in February 1943 by Karl Haberstock, acting for Adolf Hitler's projected Führermuseum at Linz, the present lot was deposited in the salt mines at Altaussee in Austria for safekeeping. Following the Allied occupation in May 1945, the painting was recovered by the Monuments Men and transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, from which it was repatriated to the French authorities in June 1948. While its 'pendant' entered the Louvre, the present portrait passed through the London market before being acquired by Morris I. Kaplan of Chicago, at whose posthumous sale in 1968 it was bought by private collectors in the United States. The attribution to Allori was endorsed by Federico Zeri prior to that sale; Zeri also suggested that the landscape may have been painted by the Flemish artist Tobias Verhaecht (see Provenance).

This portrait is datable to the early 1590s, a period in which Allori turned increasingly to Flemish painting as a means of moving beyond Giorgio Vasari's ‘modern Florentine manner’ toward a greater naturalism. Here, seemingly

We are grateful to Carlo Falciani, who has examined the painting firsthand, for endorsing the attribution to Allori and for providing his unpublished entry, which forms the basis of this catalogue note.

LITERATURE:

F. Cappi Bentivegna, Abbigliamento e costume nella pittura italiana: Rinascimento, Rome, 1962, I, p. 345, pl. 483, as 'Alessandro Allori (?)'.

Left: Fig. 1 Studio of Alessandro Allori, Portrait of a young man, Museu de Arte de São Paulo.

Right: Fig. 2 Attributed to Alessandro Allori, Portrait of a woman, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTOR

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MASTER OF FOSSA (ACTIVE UMBRIA, SECOND QUARTER OF THE 14TH CENTURY)

A triptych: Eight scenes of the Passion of Christ, with Saints Peter and Paul on the outer wings tempera and gold on panel Central panel: 19æ x 12º in. (50.2 x 31.3 cm.); left wing: 19Ω x 6¿ in. (49.5 x 16.5 cm.); right wing; 19æ x 6º in. (50.2 x 15.9 cm.) $120,000-180,000

£90,000-130,000 €110,000-150,000

PROVENANCE:

Johann Anton Ramboux (1790-1866), Cologne, by 1842.

Acquired by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, 1867. with Dr. Hermann Burg Galerie, Cologne, 1922. with Julius Böhler, Munich, acquired from the above 9 April 1925, as Giovanni Di Ugolino da Milano or Riminese School, circa 1410 (inv. no. 25-070), where acquired 13 November 1929 by Alfred C. Barnes, Philadelphia, as Riminese School, circa 1410, from whom acquired on 23 November 1929 by the following, with Julius Wilhelm Böhler, Lucerne, until at least 1938, as Riminese School, circa 1410 (inv. no. 29-139).

(Possibly) Eugene Garbaty, Berlin and then New York, acquired from the above, 19 April 1938.

(Possibly) with Julius Wilhelm Böhler, Lucerne and New York, 1949, as Riminese School, circa 1410.

(Possibly) with Kleinberger Galleries, New York.

(Possibly) Private collection, England.

[The Property of a Lady]; Christie's, London, 10 July 1987, lot 93, as The Master of the Poldi Pezzoli Diptych.

Private collection, New York. with Roy Fisher Fine Arts Inc., New York, 1995-96. with Silviano Lodi, Campione d'Italia, 1998.

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 2009, lot 24, as The Master of Fossa, where acquired after the sale by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Lust und Verlust. Kölner Sammler zwischen Trikolore und Preußenadler, 28 October 1995-28 January 1996, no. 189 (cat. by R. Krischel).

Trevi, Museo di San Francesco; Spoleto, Museo Diocesano, Basilica di Sant’Eufemia; Spoleto, Museo Nazionale del Ducato; Montefalco, Complesso Museale di San Francesco; and Scheggino, Spazio Arte Valcasana, Capolavori del Trecento. Il cantiere di Giotto, Spoleto e l'Appennino, 24 June-4 November 2018, no. 24 (cat. by A. Delpriori).

LITERATURE:

J. A. Ramboux, Katalog der Gemälde alter italienischer Meister (1221-1610) in der Sammlung des Conservator J.A. Ramboux, Cologne, 1862, p. 48, no. 289.

J. A. Ramboux, Katalog der Gemälde-Sammlung des Museums Wallraf-Richartz in Köln, Cologne, 1877.

K. Niessen, Verzeichnis der Gemälde-Sammlung des Museums Wallraf-Richartz in Köln, Cologne, 1877, p. 92, no. 756, as 'Puccio Capanna, c. 1334'.

C. Brandi, Mostra della pittura riminese del trecento, Rimini, 1935, p. XXXIII, as 'Bolognese school'.

R. van Marle, 'Contributo allo studio della scuola pittorica del Trecento a Rimini,' Rimini, IV, 1935, 7-8, pp. 1-20.

R. Longhi, La pittura umbra della prima metà del trecento nelle dispense redatte da Mina Gregori del corso 1953-54, Florence, 1973, pp. 38-39, plate 130-133, as 'The Master of the Böhler Triptych'.

F. Todini, in La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento, E. Castelnuovo, ed., Milan, 1985, II, p. 406.

F. Todini, La Pittura Umbra. Dal Duecento al Primo Cinquecento, I, Milan, 1989, p. 141, plate XVI; II, p. 149, fig. 316, as 'The Master of Fossa'.

M. Natale, Pittura Italiana dal '300 al '500, Milan, 1991, p. 160, as Tthe Master of the Poldi Pezzoli Diptych'.

H. Kier and F. Günter Zehnder, Lust und Verlust II: Corpus-Band zu Kölner

Gemäldesammlungen 1800-1860, II, Cologne, 1998, p. 581, no. 289, as 'The Master of Fossa, also known as the Master of the Böhler Triptych'.

L. Sbaraglio, in The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA: Italian Paintings from the 14th to 16th Century, III, S. Chiodo and S. Padovani eds., Florence, 2014, pp.166-174, no. 23.

A. Delpriori, La scuola di Spoleto: immagini dipinte e scolpite nel Trecento tra Valle Umbra e Valnerina, Perugia, 2015, pp. 237-241, plate VIII.32.

An important and early representation of Umbrian School painting, this remarkable triptych was painted by an anonymous artist working in Spoleto in the early fourteenth century and is notable for remaining complete. A corpus of work by the Master of Fossa was first assembled by Roberto Longhi in the 1950s. He named the Master of Fossa after a tabernacle formerly from the church of Santa Maria ad Cryptas in Fossa, near L’Aquila. At that time, Longhi coined a separate name for the author of the present work: the Master of the Böhler Triptych, in reference to its provenance in the first half of the twentieth century, when it was in the possession of the dealer Julius Böhler in Munich (loc. cit.). The triptych had previously been regarded by scholars to have been of Riminese or Bolognese origins. Longhi was the first to return it to the environs of Spoleto.

Filippo Todini would subsequently identify Longhi’s Master of Fossa and Master of the Böhler Triptych as one and the same, although the present triptych would continue on occasion to be associated with similar Umbrian hands, including the Master of the Poldi Pezzoli Diptych (Mauro Natale, loc. cit.). After recent extensive study by Alessandro Delpriori and Lorenzo Sbaraglio, both of whom date the triptych to circa 1325-30, the attribution to the Master of Fossa is now largely unchallenged and has been recently endorsed by Mauro Natale.

Most authors, regardless of how they have attributed the triptych, have noted the assimilation of earlier Sienese precedents into the master’s Umbrian aesthetic, agreeing on a tangible stylistic relationship with the narrative fresco cycles of Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini. Longhi, in particular, observed a greater subtlety and definition of sentiment in the artist’s hand than in that of other Umbrian masters. A distinct sensitivity to nature is discernible in the depiction of the landscape in the Agony in the Garden; Sbaraglio draws comparisons with the undulating mountains in Simone Martini’s fresco scene of St Martin Renouncing Earthly Weapons (Cappella di San Martino, Lower Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi).

The triptych was most likely commissioned for private devotion. It depicts the Passion of Christ across eight distinct scenes; no particular emphasis is given to the Crucifixion itself, and Delpriori has commented on the tendency of the Spoleto masters to place greater primacy on narrative than on one central image. Yet they did not bind themselves to a conventional reading of the narrative from left to right, and the current triptych presents no exception. In the nineteenth century, the wings were detached and possibly joined together independently of the central panel; the work was restored to its triptych format in the early 1900s.

We are grateful to Prof. Mauro Natale for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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JACOB CORNELISZ. VAN OOSTSANEN (OOSTZAAN C. 1460/ 5-1533 AMSTERDAM) AND WORKSHOP The Presentation in the Temple oil on panel 14Ω x 9Ω in. (36.8 x 24.2 cm.) $50,000-70,000

£38,000-52,000 €43,000-60,000

PROVENANCE:

Jacques Normand, Paris; his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 7 March 1923, lot 15, as Rhenish School.

Dr. Heinrich Becker, Dortmund, by 1964. with Hans M. Cramer, The Hague, 1975-1979.

Heinrich Bisshoff (1963-2005), Berlin, before 1993, and by descent in his family until, [The Property of a Lady]; Sotheby's, London, 7 July 2010, lot 2, as Workshop of Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostanen, acquired after the sale by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Kassel, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, on loan, 1990-2001 (inv. no.

L1134).

LITERATURE:

R. Fritz, Sammlung Becker, Dortmund, 1967, n.p., no. 37, illustrated, as the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook.

Cramer: Paintings by Old Masters, Catalogue XX, The Hague, 1975-1976, p. 126, no. 68, illustrated, as the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook.

Hans M. Cramer: Paintings by Old Masters – Catalogue XXI, Den Haag 1979, pp.108109, no. 65, as the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook.

M. Brieskorn, Das Kabinett des Sammlers. Gemälde vom XV. bis XVIII. Jahrhundert, E. Mai, ed., Cologne, 1993, pp. 37-38, no. 15, illustrated, as the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook.

P. van den Brink, in Jacob Cornelisz Van Oostsanen (ca. 1475-1533): De Renaissance in Amsterdam en Alkmaar, D. Meuwissen, ed., Zwolle, 2014, pp. 222-223, illustrated.

In this intimately scaled panel by Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen and his workshop, two scenes from the early life of Christ—separated by pilasters decorated with intricate grotesque motifs—are depicted: the Presentation in the Temple and the Purification of Mary as prescribed by the Law of Moses, both of which are recounted in the Gospel of Luke (2:22-39). Beyond the complicated temple architecture, an ornate fountain occupies the courtyard – a symbolic reference to the Christian promise of eternal life. The use of architectural conceits to separate narrative space and time also appears in another panel by Jacob Cornelisz. now in the Portland Art Museum (fig. 1, inv. no. 61.59). Datable to 1517, it depicts the Circumcision of Christ in the foreground and the Agony in the Garden beyond an architectural space defined by similarly decorated pilasters. Elements of the present composition—particularly the Virgin, the figure of Joseph, the architectural altar, and their spatial relationship—may also derive from Jacob Cornelisz’s prints, such as his Presentation in the Temple of 1513. Peter van den Brink has recently suggested that the present panel is a fragment from the upper left register of the central panel of a much larger triptych (loc. cit.), perhaps (but only as a matter of pure speculation) dedicated to the life of the Virgin, with the Death of the Virgin or Coronation of the Virgin at its center. This secondary placement within a larger composition likely accounts for the more painterly technique seen here relative to Jacob Cornelisz’s typical draftsmanship with more sharply defined details.

This painting was long considered to be by the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook, as first proposed by Karel G. Boon, Director of the Amsterdam Rijksprentenkabinet (see R. Fritz, loc. cit.). The anonymous master was named after a sketchbook in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, which contains drawings by a single, distinctive hand, including numerous motifs and compositions connected with the workshop of Jacob Cornelisz. of the 1520s. One such sheet includes similar fountain designs, although none directly correspond to the one depicted here. It had accordingly been suggested that the unknown master was an assistant in Jacob Cornelisz’s Antwerp workshop, and that the sketchbook served as a record of his motifs and compositions (see J. Carroll, 'Master of the Berlin Sketchbook,' Grove Art Online, retrieved 1 Dec. 2025). More recently, Daantje Meuwissen has identified the author of the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook as Jacob Cornelisz’s grandson, the Amsterdam painter, printmaker and cartographer Cornelis Anthonisz (1500/ 0558; see D. Meuwissen, `Attributing the Berlin Sketchbook to Cornelis Anthonisz’, Simiolus, XXXIX, no. 1/2, 2017, pp. 15-43).

When the present painting resurfaced at auction in 2010, Daantje Meuwissen and Jane Carroll rejected the attribution to the Master of the Berlin Sketchbook and proposed instead that the work was painted by an unknown artist in Oostsanen’s workshop in the 1510 who also worked on the Naples Nativity of 1512 (Museo di Capodimonte; loc. cit.). Meuwissen suggested the present work dates to somewhat later, around 1515-18, on the basis of its similarities to the painted ceiling in the Alkmaar St. Lawrence Church of 1518 and the 1517 triptych of the Adoration of the Magi in Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-4706), while Carroll noted connections to certain woodcuts by Jacob Cornelisz. (loc. cit.). More recently, Peter van den Brink has agreed with Meuwissen’s proposed dated of around 1515-18, citing the present panel's closeness to the aforementioned Adoration triptych and Portland Circumcision.

Both of these works, he notes, share an `emphasis on the box-like architectural structure and a rather rigid sense of perspective’ and include a similar assembly of elegantly dressed figures.

Fig. 1 Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen, The Circumcision of Christ, Portland Art Museum, Portland.

We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for kindly sharing his research on this painting and for proposing the attribution on the basis of firsthand inspection (private communication, December 2025).

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ABRAHAM GOVAERTS (ANTWERP 1589-1626) Vertumnus and Pomona

signed and dated 'A. GOVAERTS / 1620' (lower center) oil on copper 14¬ x 21º in. (37.2 x 54 cm.) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

Anonymous sale; Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 9 December 1964, lot 42. with Galerie Robert Finck, Brussels, 1965. with De Jonckheere Gallery, Geneva, by 1999.

J.-R. Bickart, from whom acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Hamm, Gustav-Lübcke-Museum; Mainz, Landesmuseum, Gärten and Höfe der Rubensziet im Spiegel der Malerfamilie Brueghel un der Künstler um Peter Paul Rubens, 15 October 2000-14 January 2001, 4 March 2001-24 June 2001, no. 119.

Paris, Galerie de Jonckheere, Cranach, Brueghel, Teniers et leurs contemporains, 20032004, no. 37.

LITERATURE:

U. Härting and K. Borms, Abraham Govaerts: Der Waldmaler (1589-1626), Kontich, 2004, pp. 34, 83 and 107, no. 17, fig. 18.

Y. Thierry, Les peintures flamands de paysages au XVIIe siècle: Des precurseurs à Rubens, Brussels, 1986, p. 218-219.

S. Reilly, 'Around the Galleries - A tour of Geneva's Old Town, plus other highlights', Apollo, published online, 2 April 2022, illustrated.

This beautifully preserved copper panel is a fine example of Abraham Govaerts’s landscape painting. Dated 1620, the painting marks a moment when Govaerts began to move away from the traditional coloristic techniques used to create atmosphere—methods employed by Gillis van Coninxloo and Joos de Momper I—in favor of the pure and brilliant pigments characteristic of Jan Brueghel the Elder. Here, Govaerts achieves a sense of spatial depth through the careful arrangement of still-life elements and landscape features: the vegetable carts at left and the foliage and flowers at right form coulisses, framing a sharply rendered one-point perspective that guides the viewer’s eye along the garden path, disappearing beyond a distant trellis. The delicate depiction of flowers, vegetables, and fruits reveals Brueghel’s influence on Govaerts, who emulated his style in both independent and collaborative works with Frans Francken II. At the center of the scene, Vertumnus, the god of the seasons, appears in the guise of an old woman as he meets Pomona, the goddess of gardens and orchards (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14:623–700). Vertumnus, persistent in his pursuit of Pomona’s love, had previously disguised himself as a farmer, a soldier, and a fisherman, all to no avail. In his final attempt, he approaches her as an old woman and uses the allegory of the grapevine supported by the elm tree to persuade her that, like the vine, she too requires the support provided by marriage. Along the right edge of the panel, Govaerts depicts a grapevine entwined around a tree, elegantly referencing Vertumnus’s allegory.

(detail)

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF AMBASSADOR J. WILLIAM MIDDENDORF II, RHODE ISLAND

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FRANS HALS (ANTWERP 1582-1666 HAARLEM) Portrait of a gentleman, half-length oil on canvas 28æ x 23æ in. (73.2 x 60.4 cm.) $400,000-600,000

£300,000-450,000 €350,000-510,000

PROVENANCE:

Private collection, The Hague, by 1927. with Kleykamp Galleries, The Hague, by 1927.

Guido Arnot, born Abeles (1876-1946), London, by 1928. with Knoedler Gallery, New York, by September 1928. with Robert Frank Ltd, London, by December 1937.

A.G. Mercuria, Luzern, by May 1938. with Knoedler Gallery, New York, by May 1938, until April 1948. with Pinakos Inc. (i.e., Rudolph J. Heinemann, 1901-1975), New York, by April 1948. with Newhouse Galleries, New York, by 1948, where acquired by the following, with Frederick Mont (1894-1994), New York, by 1948.

William L. Moody III (1894-1992), San Antonio, TX, by 1964.

Thomas Mellon Evans (1910-1997), Greenwich, CT; his sale, Christie’s, New York, 25 May 1999, lot 11, as Judith Leyster, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

Amsterdam, The Van Wisselingh Gallery, Hollandsche en Vlaamse Schilderkunst der XVIIe Eeuw, 20 July - 20 August 1932, no. 4.

Wilmington, The Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, Exhibition of a Collection of Old Masters, 8-30 April 1935, no. 5.

Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, An Exhibition of Fifty Paintings by Frans Hals, 10 January-28 February 1935, no. 36.

Haarlem, Frans Halsmuseum, Frans Hals. Tentoonstelling ter gelegenheid van het 75-jarig bestaan van het Gemeentelijk Museum te Haarlem, 1 July-30 September 1937, no. 39.

New York, Schaeffer Galleries, Paintings by Frans Hals: Exhibition for the Benefit of New York University, November 1937, no. 8, as Frans Hals.

Fort Worth, Fort Worth Art Association, Exhibition of Old Masters, December 1940, no. 1.

LITERATURE:

W. R. Valentiner, Catalogue introduction for the 1935 Detroit Exhibition, reproduced in full in Art News, 12 January 1935, pp. 3-11.

W. R. Valentiner, Frans Hals Paintings in America, 1936, no. 36, illustrated.

G.D. Gratama, Frans Hals, The Hague, 1943, p. 54, no. 36, illustrated.

C. Grimm, Frans Hals, Berlin, 1972, pp. 87, 202, no. 56, fig. 81.

C. Grimm, L’opera completa de Frans Hals, Milan, 1974, p. 96, no. 80, fig. 80.

C. Grimm, Frans Hals, Das Gesamtwerk, Stuttgart and Zurich, 1989, pp. 272-273, no.

25, fig. 25.

F. Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A Woman Painter in Holland's Golden Age, Doornspijk, 1989, pp. 61-62, no. 40, pl. 40, as Judith Leyster.

C. Grimm, Frans Hals and his workshop, E. Dullaart, ed., online, updated 2025, no.

A1.20, illustrated.

The sitter in this arresting bust-length portrait turns slightly to his right to candidly engage the viewer with an expression of genial warmth. He wears a black jacket of fine wool, embellished with a delicate floral pattern and complemented with black silk sleeves adorned with concentric ribbon appliqués. A sumptuous, two-tiered linen ruff sewn into scrolls completes the ensemble, focusing the viewer’s attention on the man’s reddish-blond beard and his jovial face, which are rendered with Hals’s characteristically animated, bravura brushwork.

Following its emergence on the Dutch art market in the late 1920s, this portrait was first published by Wilhelm Valentiner in 1935 as an autograph work by Frans Hals (loc. cit.). Gerrit David Gratama, who served as director of the Frans Hals Museum from 1912 to 1946, quickly endorsed Valentiner’s attribution, borrowing the painting for the landmark 1937 Frans Hals exhibition in Haarlem and later including it in his 1943 monograph (loc. cit.). Curiously, Seymour Slive omitted the work from both of his catalogues raisonnés (1970–74; 2014).

As Pieter Biesboer has recently pointed out in an unpublished report, Slive’s personal notes on Hals—which were acquired from his family after his death by the Frans Hals Museum and recently were reviewed by Norbert Middelkoop— reveal that the historian examined the painting firsthand in 1999, when it sold at auction as Judith Leyster. This attribution reflected an alternative theory proposed by Frima Fox Hofrichter, who noted parallels with Leyster’s smallscale, signed and dated 1635 Portrait of a woman in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. While Slive documents in his papers that Valentiner confirmed the portrait as an authentic work by Hals in a 1948 letter to Newhouse Galleries, Slive himself does not make any conclusive statements about his personal view about this painting's attribution. Claus Grimm, on the other hand, has consistently upheld the painting as an autograph work by Hals, including it both

Fig. 1 Frans Hals, Portrait of Nicolaes Woutersz van der Meer, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.

in his 1972 monograph on the artist and in his most recent catalogue raisonné (2023–24, loc. cit.). Norbert Middelkoop, former curator at the Frans Hals Museum, inspected the work in 2024 and likewise considers it to be by Hals.

As Biesboer has observed, the present portrait displays all the hallmarks of Hals’s mature style: fluid, confident brushwork and a vivacity of expression that animates the sitter with palpable immediacy. He notes that the handling of paint aligns closely with Hals’s portraits of the early 1630s, particularly the likeness of Burgomaster Nicolaes van der Meer (1631, Frans Hals Museum; fig. 1), who similarly appears in slightly old-fashioned attire. Biesboer also points to the comparably vivacious passages in Hals’s Portrait of a man holding his hand on his heart of 1632 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux; fig. 2) and the 1633 Portrait of a man in his thirties (National Gallery, London), where the treatment of facial features and hair is similar to that in the present work.

Biesboer situates the portrait between 1630 and 1633, whereas Grimm proposes a slightly earlier date of circa 1625–26, citing its 'psychological presence and lively eye movement’ as well as Hals’s 'confident study of moving, and appealing features’ (C. Grimm, 2025, loc. cit.). The painting exemplifies Hals’s singular ability to fuse technical brilliance with psychological insight.

As Biesboer concludes: 'The sitter exudes a convivial feeling of kind friendliness—a benevolent mien—which no other artist than Frans Hals himself was capable of capturing in his singular portraits—of which this amiable specimen is a fine example’.

We are grateful to Norbert Middelkoop for sharing his research from the Slive archives and for endorsing the attribution to Hals on the basis of firsthand inspection of the painting (written communication, 13 December 2025).

Fig. 2 Frans Hals, Portrait of a man in his thirties, National Gallery, London.

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DAVID RIJCKAERT II (ANTWERP 1589-1642)

An ornamented Rhenish stoneware ewer with pewter lids on the spout and neck, a pewter dish with a variety of sweets and cookies, a roemer of white wine, a cup and gilt holder with red wine, three olives, half a bread roll, and an orange on a stone table oil on panel 19Ω x 13æ in. (49.5 x 35.3 cm.) $200,000-300,000

£150,000-220,000 €180,000-260,000

PROVENANCE:

Anonymous sale; Galerie Rudolph, Hamburg, 29 March 1951, lot 434, as Osias Beert.

[Property from an Important European Collection]; Christie's, London, 6 July 2017, lot 3, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

Advertisement, Arts du Monde, 15 April 1951, illustrated, as Osias Beert.

Painted by the rare and enigmatic artist David Rijckaert II, this painting exemplifies the most esteemed qualities of the first generation of Flemish still-life painters, with its incisive detailing of objects and carefully balanced composition. The chromatic palette, dramatically lit foreground and meticulous treatment of everyday objects in this picture follows a tradition established

by Osias Beert I (c. 1580-late 1624), Georg Flegel (1566-1638) and Clara Peeters (?1589-1657), who shaped the vocabulary of early still-life painters, developing the genre that flourished in Antwerp, Haarlem and Frankfurt am Main at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Small cabinet pictures, such as the present painting, were intended for intimate study by discerning viewers familiar with their symbolism, and would have been displayed among collections of artefacts and naturalia, alongside other paintings, scientific instruments, ornate objects, and classical antiques.

This composition can be classified as an ontbijtje, or ‘breakfast still life’, representing both a display of gastronomic luxury and a symbol of religious ideas. In the seventeenth-century culinary culture of the aristocracy and patrician middle classes, banquets consisted of up to nine courses and always concluded with dessert. Sugar confectionery came to prominence at the turn of the seventeenth century, having previously been used only for pharmaceutical purposes, and marked a dramatic transformation in taste, quickly replacing honey as a sweetener. The religious undertones in this painting are emphasized by the sweets arranged in the form of a cross in the left foreground, while the water and wine allude to Christ’s first miracle at the Marriage at Cana, and the wine and bread are Eucharistic symbols of his blood and body.

As a display of luxury, Rijckaert includes two drinking vessels: a Berkemeier glass and a conically shaped one in a gold bekerschroef, or glass-holder, which transforms a simple glass into an elegant vessel by providing an intricately designed stem and base. Rijckaert paints the stoneware ewer with such precision that it can be identified as a ‘Schnabelkanne’, produced in the ceramics tradition of Siegburg, Germany, most probably by the potter Christian Knütgen, a member of the influential potter dynasty, between 1550 and 1600.

The stylistic and decorative motifs can be closely matched to comparable objects by the maker in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 1; inv. no. 11.93.3) and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. 8457-1863), which are distinctive in their applied molded reliefs and incised ‘kerbschnitt’ chip-carved geometric decoration. The ornate, curvilinear designs typically had allegorical or religious significance and could depict entire narratives, usually made after prints of the nominal ‘Little Masters’ of the German school, such as Virgil Solis, Bartel Beham, and Theodore de Bry. The industry of German stoneware played an important part in the material culture of early modern Low Countries, catering to the life of Netherlandish middle classes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The scarcity of Rijckaert's work can be attributed to historical confusion surrounding his identity. Rijckaert's name was borne by three successive members of an extended family of painters, all registered in the De Liggeren of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. His father, David Rijckaert (1560-1607), was a brewer and ‘stoffeerder’—a decorator of wooden statues—and his son, David Rijckaert III (1612-1661), trained as a painter specializing in landscape and genre scenes. It was only after 1995, when a large decorative still life of shells, glassware and ceramics—signed and dated ‘DAVIDT.RYCKAERTS. / .1616.’—was sold, that new information came to light regarding Rijckaert's unique artistic identity (see Christie's, London, 8 December 1995, lot 38A). Dr. Fred G. Meijer deemed that painting far too early to be by David Rijckaert III, concluding that it was painted by David Rijckaert II (F.G. Meijer, ‘Herkend: Een stilleven van David Rijckaert II’, Magazine Rijksmuseum Twenthe, 2009, no. 1, pp. 26-28), from which an oeuvre could thus be reasonably established. Since the 1995 sale, Dr. Meijer has identified some 15 paintings as part of Rijckaert II's oeuvre, including a pair of still lifes featuring elegant glassware, shells and porcelain (sold Christie's, Paris, 16 October 2013, lots 82 and 83), a Still life with a lemon and capon (Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, inv. no. 0272), and the present picture.

Fig. 1 After Theodor de Bry, Ewer (Schnabelkanne), glazed stoneware and pewter, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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HENDRICK TER BRUGGHEN (UTRECHT 1588-1629) Mucius Scaevola before Lars Porsenna oil on canvas 69º x 81Ω in. (175.9 x 207 cm.) $120,000-180,000

£90,000-130,000 €110,000-150,000

PROVENANCE:

(Probably) Hendrick Christiansz. Hoeffslager, (c.1580-1625), Amsterdam; his deceased sale, Amsterdam, 19 March 1625, lot 45, for 44 guilders to, Herman de Bisschop (1588-1637), Amsterdam.

Private collection, North Italy.

Art market, Genoa.

Private collection, Lausanne.

Art market, Lausanne, by 1973. with Gilberto Algranti, London by 1974.

EXHIBITED:

London, Helikon, Exhibition of Old Masters, June-September 1974.

New York, I. & G. Fine Art International and Knoedler Gallery, Exhibition of Old Masters, 7 May-6 June 1981, no. 7.

Modena, Gallerie Estensi, Ter Brugghen dall’Olanda all’Italia sulle orme di Caravaggio, 13 October 2023-14 January 2024, no. 7, color photograph only; entry by T. Borgogelli.

LITERATURE:

D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche Kunstgeschiedenis, VI, 1884-1887, p. 37, citing the painting sold in the Hoeffslager sale described as 'Marcus Mutius Romeyn' (loc. cit.).

C. Baker, 'Hendrick Terbrugghen and Plein Air', The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, L, no. 289, April 1927, p. 196, citing the painting sold in the Hoeffslager described as 'Marcus Mutius Romeyn' (loc. cit.).

B. Nicolson, Hendrick Terbrugghen, London, 1958, p. 49, citing the painting sold in the Hoeffslager sale described as 'Marcus Mutius Romeyn' (loc. cit.).

B. Nicolson, 'Terbrugghen Since 1960', Album Amicorum J.G. Van Gelder, J. Bruyn, J.A. Emmens, E. de Jongh and Dp.P Snoep, eds., The Hague, 1973, pp. 238-239, figs. 7 and 8.

G. Algranti, Exhibition of Old Masters, exhibition catalogue, London, 1974, illustrated.

B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Oxford, 1979, p. 189.

B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford and New York, 1979, pp. 98 and 211.

G. Algranti, Exhibition of Old Masters, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1981, no. 7, illustrated.

R.W. Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the poetic tradition in Caravaggesque painting, University Park and London, 1981, pp. 66 and 93, notes 30 and 31.

M. Marini, 'Gli esordi del Caravaggio e il concetto di "natura" nei primi decenni del Seicento a Roma. Equivoci del caravaggismo', Artibus et historiae, II, no. 4, 1981, p. 66, fig. 37, erroneously listed as with Knoedler Gallery, New York.

L.J. Slatkes, 'Book reviews: Benedict Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement. Oxford (Phaidon) 1979.', Simiolus, XII, nos. 2/3, 1981-1982, pp. 182-183.

C. Schuckman, 'Did Hendrick ter Brugghen revisit Italy? Notes from an unknown manuscript by Cornelis de Bie', The Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury, IV, 1986, pp. 9-10 and 15, fig. 14.

L.J. Slatkes, 'Das Werk des Hendrick ter Brugghen', Holländische malerei in neuem licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine zeitgenossen, A. Blankert and L.J. Slatkes, eds., exhibition catalogue, Utrecht and Braunschweig, 1986, p. 49, fig. 44.

M.J. Bok, 'Schilderijen van Hendrick ter Brugghen', Holländische malerei in neuem licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine zeitgenossen, A. Blankert and L.J. Slatkes, eds., exhibition catalogue, Utrecht and Braunschweig, 1986, p. 71, citing the painting sold in the Hoeffslager sale described as 'Marcus Mutius Romeyn' (loc. cit.).

P. van Kooij, 'Ter Brugghen, Dürer and Lucas van Leyden', The Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury, V, 1987, pp. 15 and 19, note 9, fig. 10, as Attributed to ter Brugghen.

L.J. Slatkes, 'Rethinking ter Brugghen's Early Chronology', Hendrick ter Brugghen und die nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland: Beiträge eines symposium aus anlaß der ausstellung "Holländische malerei in neuem licht : Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine zeitgenossen", R. Klessman, ed., Braunschweig, 1988, pp. 77, 80 and 82-84, notes 11, 12, 41 and 42, fig. 98.

J. Nieuwstraten, 'Some Remarks on Ter Brugghen', Hendrick ter Brugghen und die nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland: Beiträge eines symposium aus anlaß der ausstellung "Holländische malerei in neuem licht : Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine zeitgenossen", R. Klessman, ed., Braunschweig, 1988, pp. 100-101, as not by ter Brugghen, possibly by R. van Adelo.

G.J.M. Weber, 'Ter Brugghen, Elsheimer, Poel and Rubens', The Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury, VII, 1988, p. 26, note 21.

B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, I, Turin 1989, p. 189.

A. Garen, Mucius Scaevola vor Porsenna: Frühneuzeitliche auffassungen einer römischen bürgertugend in der europäischen malerei vom 15. - 18. Jahrhundert, Osnabrück, 2003, I, pp. 148-149, note 386, II p. 29, no. 67, illustrated W. Prohaska, in Darkness & Light: Caravaggio & his world, exhibition catalogue, Sydney and Melbourne, 2003, p. 100 and note 5.

P.H. Janssen, 'Book Review: Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1588-1629: Catalogue Raisonné', Simiolus, XXXII, no. 4, 2006, pp. 315, 316, as not autograph.

L.J. Slatkes and W. Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588-1629: Catalogue Raisonné, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2007, pp. 12-14, 29, 43-44, 142-144 and 348, no. A43, plate. 42.

G. Papi, ‘Per la ricostruzione del soggiorno di Hendrick ter Brugghen in Italia’, Ter Brugghen dall’Olanda all’Italia sulle orme di Caravaggio, F. Fischetti and G. Papi, eds., exhibition catalogue, Modena, 2023-24, pp. 37-38 and 41, fig. 26 (detail).

J. Gash, ‘Additions to Ter Brugghen in Italy: “Christ bound to the column” and “St John the Baptist in the wilderness”’, The Burlington Magazine, XLXVII, March 2025, pp. 237238 and 240, fig. 17.

Offered for the first time in over a decade, Mucius Scaevola before Lars Porsenna provides an excellent example of Ter Brugghen’s hitherto mysterious Italian-period work. A few scholars had previously expressed doubts about its authenticity, including myself in a footnote to an entry on the picture in the monograph on the artist that I completed for the late Leonard J. Slatkes (L. Slatkes and W. Franits, op. cit., p. 143 n. 2). However, in providing a fuller and more accurate understanding of Ter Brugghen’s output during his approximately seven-year stay in Rome (ca. 1607-1614), the Caravaggisti specialists Gianni Papi (G. Papi, loc. cit.), John Gash (J. Gash, loc. cit. ), and Tommaso Borgogelli (T. Borgogelli, loc. cit.) have all convincingly reattributed this canvas to the Dutch master himself, opinions with which I now wholeheartedly concur.

Mucius Scaevola before Lars Porsenna’s stylistic ties to other Italian-period Ter Brugghen paintings are quite clear. For example, the helmeted figures in profile in the background recall those of his Christ bound to the Column (private collection; fig. 1 ). Moreover, the lowered head of St. John the Baptist in Ter Brugghen’s eponymous painting of 1610—the earliest known work by the artist—echoes that of the figure standing at the far right of our canvas (private collection; fig. 2). And like these two pictures, it is also relatively smoothly painted. Borgogelli places our canvas around 1610-12 (T. Borgogelli, loc. cit.), but a date of 1612-14 seems more likely given the competently drawn figures (who largely lack the awkward anatomical details of the other two paintings) and Porsenna’s doublet with its claret-colored stripes, which anticipate the colorful clothing of Ter Brugghen’s Utrecht-period works.

Speaking of those latter Utrecht-period paintings, both compositionally and in the handling of the secondary figures, Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna relates to Ter Brugghen's Copenhagen Christ Crowned with Thorns (L. Slatkes and W. Franits, loc. cit., no. A13), signed and dated 1620, and the slightly earlier Le Havre Calling of St. Matthew (L. Slatkes and W. Franits, loc. cit., no. A33). The fluid rendering of the reflections on the armor confirms this, as does the profile, facial features, and the odd framing position of the hat of the standing figure to the extreme right. Ter Brugghen resorted to this figure to paint the one who appears straddling the stool in the Le Havre picture.

Fig. 1 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Christ on the Column, private collection.

The singular beauty of Ter Brugghen’s canvas matches its subject, one rarely painted by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. The story of Mucius Scaevola's bravery appears in three important classical sources, Livy, The History of Rome, bk. 2, 12, Plutarch, Lives, bk. 6, 17, and Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium, bk. 3, 1. It is Valerius Maximus’s recounting of the story that most likely provided Ter Brugghen's iconographic point of departure; later in his career he would return to its influential text for his rendition of the New York Cimon and Pero (W. Franits, ‘”Roman Charity”: a newly discovered painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen’, The Burlington Magazine, CLXIII, 2021, pp. 806-811). During the siege of Rome by the Etruscans, Caius Mucius Scaevola killed King Porsenna's secretary in a failed assassination attempt. The king ordered the young Roman to be burned alive. Mucius courageously thrust his right hand into a fire without flinching, so impressing Porsenna that he freed him. When Porsenna learned that Mucius was only the first of 300 Romans selected by lot to assassinate him he lifted the siege and withdrew. Mucius was known thereafter as 'Scaevola', that is, the 'left-handed one'.

Lastly, what also makes Mucius Scaevola before Porsenna a particularly special painting is its potentially intriguing connection to an archival reference dating 1625 (see the Provenance section above). Although we cannot be absolutely certain that it references our picture or another version thereof, it is the earliest documented Ter Brugghen work to be sold publicly; four years before his death, in fact.

-Wayne Franits

Fig. 2 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Saint John the Baptist, private collection.

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION

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DAVID TENIERS II (ANTWERP 1610-1690 BRUSSELS) The Kermesse of Saint George signed 'DAVID · TENIERS · F' (lower right) oil on copper, laid down on board 20º x 26¿ in. (51.5 x 66.2 cm.) $300,000-500,000

£230,000-370,000 €260,000-430,000

PROVENANCE:

Private collection, France, until 2006. with Johnny van Haeften Limited, London, where acquired by a private collector in 2006.

In his sixty-year career David Teniers II returned to country kermesses, village weddings and dances outside taverns more than any other theme, taking great joy in the depiction of crowds of revelers. Teniers was registered as a master in the Antwerp guild of Saint Luke in 1633 and five years later married Anna Brueghel, daughter of Jan Breughel I of the great dynasty of painters. It is no coincidence that Teniers favored such scenes, as he inherited a number of Brueghel family drawings and paintings, which provided endless inspiration for his own compositions. His inventive and colorful kermesses were popular among Europe's elite, including both Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm (see, for example, the painting today in The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, inv. no. 1156) and William II, Prince of Orange.

In this painting, merrymakers gather outside an inn, bearing the red banner of Saint George. People of all ages join in the celebration: some are seated at tables eating and drinking, a young couple at center dances to a bagpiper’s tune, a man in the foreground sleeps off his over indulgence, another vomits whilst leaning against the inn's signpost at right and a third man is reluctantly led away from the revelry. Beyond the tree line, the spire of a distant church is visible. The silvery blue sky and bright reds and blues of the figures’ clothing are typical of Teniers’ paintings of the 1640s, a period that saw him eschew the more monochrome palette of his earlier works.

Another kermesse in a Belgian private collection, also executed on copper and datable to circa 1642, includes a similar dancing couple at the center, with the young man tossing up his red cap in a celebratory gesture, as well as a nearly identical still life at lower right: a discarded broom set against a bench, with an upturned pot resting against barrels (fig. 1). The repetition of such motifs indicates that both paintings were developed from drawings, which provided endless source material for Teniers to develop into novel compositions.

Fig. 1 David Teniers II, The Kermesse on Saint George’s Day, private collection, Belgium.

Lots 32–38

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MATTHIAS STOMER (?AMERSFOORT 1599/1600-1645 OR AFTER ?VENICE) A young man lighting his pipe oil on canvas 52√ x 37Ω in. (134.3 x 95.3 cm.) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

Principe di Galati, Palazzo Galati, Palermo (where documented as a pendant to Adam de Coster A young woman holding a distaff before a lit candle), by descent in the family since the 17th century until at least 1958.

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 17 January 1992, lot 46A (pendant by Adam de Coster sold as lot 46).

[Property of a Private Collector]; Sotheby's, New York, 28 January 1999, lot 306, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

S. Fokker, 'Nederlandsche schilders in Zuid-Italië', Oud Holland, XLVI, 1929, p. 23.

G. Isarlo, Le Caravage et le Caravagisme Européen, II, Aix-en-Provence, 1941, p. 232.

H. Pauwels, 'De schilder Matthias Stomer', Gentse bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis, XIV, 1953, p. 173.

B. Nicolson, Hendrick Terbrugghen, London, 1958, pp. 65-66, pl. 33a.

B. Nicolson, 'Stomer Brought Up-to-Date', Burlington Magazine, CXIX, 1977, p. 245, no.

137.

B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford, 1979, p. 96.

L.J. Slatkes, in Holländische Malerei in neuen licht - Hendrik Ter Brugghen und Seine Zetigenossen, A. Blankert and L.J. Slatkes, eds., exhibition catalogue, Utrecht, 1986, p.

108, under no. 13, note 13.

B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Oxford, 1989, I, p. 187.

F. Fischbacher, Matthias Stomer: Die sizilianischen Nachtstücke, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, pp. 82, 85-86, fig. 15.

R. Verdi, 'Nicolson's Stom brought up-to-date', in Matthias Stom, Isaac blessing Jacob, exhibition catalogue, London, 1999, p. 67.

L.J. Slatkes and W. Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2007, pp. 155-156, note 15.

Matthias Stomer is widely regarded as one of the last great exponents of Caravaggism in Italy, and this imposing half-length of a young cavalier absorbed in the act of lighting his pipe epitomizes the qualities that make his work so compelling. Set close to the picture plane in a dark interior, the figure leans toward an oil lamp placed just beyond the edge of the composition, bringing the bowl of his pipe into the flame. The concentrated pool of light isolates his head and hands against the enveloping shadow, animating the planes of the face and the metallic highlights of his accoutrements while allowing the rest of the canvas to dissolve into darkness. The scale and the painterly assurance with which light and smoke are handled give the picture a commanding, almost theatrical presence.

Stomer, who was known by the surname Stom in his lifetime, may have been of Flemish origin. As Marten Jan Bok has pointed out, many individuals of this surname in the Dutch Republic had emigrated from Flanders, particularly Brussels and Ostend (see M.J. Bok, ‘Matthias Stom’, Nieuw licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten, Utrecht, 1986-7, p. 333, notes 16 and 17). Whether a Flemish immigrant himself or the descendant of those who were, the artist probably received his training in Utrecht, possibly under the leading Caravaggesque painter Hendrick ter Brugghen, or in nearby Amersfoort.

The influence of artists working in these centers is still legible in the present canvas: the subject of a fashionable young smoker in half-length, the close-up format, and the emphatic chiaroscuro all recall the Utrecht taste for tronies and genre scenes by candlelight. Nicolson's classic monograph on ter Brugghen drew attention to the proliferation of pipe-smokers and drinkers in Utrecht painting of the 1620s and 1630s, a repertory that was evidently a source for Stomer's own candle- and lamplight half-figures (see B. Nicolson, 1958, op. cit., pp. 65-66).

At some point prior to 1630—the year in which he is recorded in the Stato delle Anime (annual Easter census) as living on the Strada dell’Ormo, in the parish of San Nicolà in Arcione (Rione Trevi), with the slightly younger French painter Nicolas Prévost (1604-1670)—Stomer had departed the Netherlands for Rome (see G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague, 1942, p. 279). He was said to be thirty years old at the time of the census, making his birth year either 1599 or 1600. Records place him in Naples by 28 July 1635 (see M. Osnabrugge, ‘New Documents for Matthias Stom in Naples’, The Burlington Magazine, CLVI, no. 1331, 2014, pp. 107-8), though he may have been resident there by late 1632 or 1633. Stomer moved to Sicily in 1639, where, in 1641, he painted his only surviving signed and dated work, the Miracle of Saint Isidorus Agricola for the high altar of the church of the Agostiniani, Caccamo, Sicily (where it remains in situ). In 1642, baptismal records indicate he had relocated to Venice, where he would remain until at least 1645, after which time all documentary trace of his movements is lost.

Whereas many of Stomer’s fellow Caravaggisti in Italy gravitated toward witty or bawdy genre scenes, his production is dominated by large religious narratives and solemn devotional heads, their drama heightened by a single intense light source (see B. Nicolson, 1979, op. cit., p. 96). The young figure here may be compared with other bust-length and half-length figures by Stomer—soldiers, old women, and youths—in which the features are built up with broad, loaded strokes and the transitions from light to shadow are handled with a characteristic, slightly granular touch (see B. Nicolson,1989, op. cit., pp. 187 and244). His celebrated nocturnes such as Young Man Reading by Candlelight (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) and An Old Woman and a Boy by Candlelight (Birmingham Museums Trust) reveal the same fascination with the behavior of light on skin, cloth, and metal in a confined, darkened space, and the same ready, unidealized observation of his sitters. The cavalier's absorbed concentration as he bends to the lamp, the flare of the flame against the clay bowl, and the barely suggested tendrils of smoke curling into the darkness all testify to Stomer's ability to invest a modest quotidian gesture with a powerful, almost meditative intensity.

Nicolson was the first to date this picture to Stomer's years in Sicily, grouping it with works whose stylized physiognomies and strongly modeled surfaces he described as a ‘baked clay’ technique (see B. Nicolson, 1977, op. cit., p. 233).

In that article he singled out three late Sicilian works—Man Blowing on a Firebrand (Palermo, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia), Tobias Healing His Father (Florence, Fondazione Longhi), and the present Young Man Lighting his Pipe— as exemplary of this manner. Fischbacher later incorporated the canvas into her survey of Stomer's Sicilian nocturnes, comparing it closely with the Caccamo altarpiece and dating it to the early 1640s, when the artist was responding most intensely to local devotional and Caravaggesque models (F. Fischbacher, op. cit., pp. 82 & 85-86).

For many years this painting hung in Palermo in Palazzo Galati, where it formed a pendant to Adam de Coster's celebrated Young Woman Holding a Distaff before a Lit Candle (fig. 1; sold Sotheby's, New York, 25 January 2017, lot 23, for $4,850,000). The two canvases remained together from their early history in the Galati collection, passing by descent through the family and subsequently into a private collection until their sale in 1992 (see Provenance). The appearance at auction of direct copies after this pair, which also came from a private Sicilian collection, provides further evidence for their shared Sicilian provenance and connection as former pendants (Wannenes, Genoa, 30 November 2016, lot 656).

Fig. 1 Adam de Coster, Young woman holding a distaff before a lit candle, Sotheby’s, New York, 25 January 2017, lot 23.

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MASTER OF THE HARTFORD STILL LIFE (ACTIVE IN ROME, LATE 16TH/EARLY 17TH CENTURY) A still life with a blue-and-white vase of flowers, a gilt tazza with peaches, plums and fraises du bois, with a pear, figs, cherries, peaches and other fruit on a ledge oil on canvas 24√ x 30¿ in. (63.2 x 76.5 cm.) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 30 January 1997, lot 75, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

M. Gregori, ed., La natura morta italiana da Caravaggio al Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Monaco and Florence, 2002, pp. 49-50, fig. 1.

A. Coliva and D. Dotti, eds., L'origine della natura morta in Italia, Caravaggio e il Maestro di Hartford, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 2016, pp. 136, 138, and 143, fig. 13, note 66, as 'Attributed to The Master of Hartford and collaborator'.

This richly orchestrated still life belongs to the small yet important corpus of canvases associated with the anonymous painter known as the Master the Hartford Still Life. Named after the impressive canvas in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (inv. no. 1942.353; fig. 1), this artist is now recognized as a central figure in the genesis of Roman still-life painting at the turn of the seventeenth century. The present painting—with its blue-and-white vase of cut flowers to the left and a gilt tazza piled high with wild strawberries, peaches, and plums to the right—encapsulates the Master’s highly individual response to Caravaggesque naturalism at the very moment in which independent still lifes were emerging as a genre in Rome.

The composition is organized paratactically across the breadth of the canvas in two principal clusters, set upon a monumental stone ledge and silhouetted against a velvety dark ground. On the left, an elaborately decorated ceramic vase supports an exuberant bouquet including tulips, irises, narcissi, carnations, and daisies, each flower described sharply against the shadow. Mina Gregori has associated the vase with the contemporary Roman taste for vasi grotteschi, the playfully ornate vessels then fashionable in aristocratic collections (M. Gregori, op. cit., pp. 49-50). On the right, an elegant gilt metal tazza rises from the ledge, its shallow bowl heaped with softly blushed peaches, purple and yellow plums, and an abundance of fraises du bois. Between these two vertical accents, the stone surface is animated by a cornucopia of fruit spread in apparently casual profusion, whose skins and leaves catch the raking light, creating a subtle play of highlights and reflections across the cold stone plane. The strong lateral light falling from the left, sharply defining each object with crisp highlights while maintaining its contour, exemplifies what Alberto Cottino has described as an innovative use of light to ‘bind objects together and define them with extraordinary optical clarity’ (A. Cottino, La natura morta in Italia, Milan, 1989, vol. II, p. 691).

Scholarship surrounding the Master of Hartford is inextricably bound to the biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). The namesake Hartford picture was first published by Charles Sterling in 1952; while Sterling there rejected the traditional attribution to the Lombard painter Fede Galizia in the second (1959) edition of La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours he went on to consider the composition a reflection of a lost work by Caravaggio (C. Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, Paris, 1952, p. 87; 2nd ed., 1959, p. 54). This connection was deepened in 1976 by Federico Zeri, who proposed that the Master of Hartford was none other than the young Caravaggio himself, working in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d’Arpino (F. Zeri, ‘Sull’esecuzione di natura morte nella bottega del Cavalier d’Arpino...’, Diari di lavoro 2, Turin, 1976, pp. 92-103). Zeri drew attention to the 1607 sequestration inventory of Cavaliere d’Arpino’s collection, which listed floral and fruit pieces alongside known Caravaggio masterpieces (ibid.). The close relationship with Caravaggio has also been read in the light of Giovanni Pietro Bellori’s biographical note that the young Lombard ‘was applied to painting flowers and fruit’ (‘fu applicato a dipinger fiori, e frutti’) upon his arrival in Rome (G.P. Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Rome, 1672).

Mina Gregori situates the beginnings of the Hartford Master’s activity within this specific context of the d’Arpino workshop, which she presents as a crucible for experimentation in the genre (Gregori, op. cit., pp. 49–50). She notes that his still lifes mirror key ideas developed by Caravaggio: the illumination of natural objects within a confined space, the oblique band of light across a dark wall, the basket teetering on the table edge, and glass carafes of flowers with shimmering transparencies (ibid.). While scholarly opinion remains divided on the specific identity of the Master—with candidates ranging from the young Caravaggio to Francesco Zucchi or Giovanni Battista Crescenzi—there is broad agreement that the artist worked in close sympathy with Caravaggio’s naturalism.

Within the painter’s surviving oeuvre, the present canvas marks a significant development. The distinctive combination of the grotesque-decorated vase, the sumptuous metal tazza, and the almost scientific exactitude of the fruit signals the painter’s central role in shaping Roman still-life painting as a vehicle for both sensuous display and intellectual meditation on the ‘new nature’ (Gregori, op. cit.; Coliva and Dotti, op. cit.).

We are grateful to Davide Dotti for endorsing the attribution to The Master of the Hartford Still Life on the basis of digital photographs (written communication; 7 November 2025).

Fig. 1 Master of the Hartford Still Life, Still life with flowers and fruits, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.

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BERNARDO STROZZI (GENOA 1581-1644 VENICE)

The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist oil on canvas 37 x 49√ in. (94 x 126.7 cm.) inscribed 'Ecce A[gn]us' (upper center, on the scroll around the cross) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

with Galerie Canesso, Paris, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

C. Manzitti, Bernardo Strozzi, 2012, p. 42, pl. I, and p. 75, no. 1.

A. Orlando, in A. Orlando and D. Sanguineti, eds., Bernardo Strozzi 1582-1644: La conquista del colore, exhibition catalogue, Genoa, 2019, p. 111, fig. 16, note 22.

This early work by Bernardo Strozzi exemplifies the formative years of one of the most distinctive painters of the Italian Baroque. Dating to circa 1605-10, the canvas belongs to a pivotal moment in Strozzi's development—the final years of his time as a Capuchin friar or the period immediately following his departure from the convent between 1608 and 1609, when he obtained dispensation in order to care for his widowed mother and established himself as an independent master in Genoa (C. Manzitti, op. cit., p. 75; A. Orlando, loc. cit.; D. Sanguineti, 'Strozzi, Bernardo, detto il Prete genovese o il Cappuccino', Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XCIV, Rome, 2019). It was during this period that Strozzi began to synthesize the disparate influences of his training into a distinctive language of striking chromatic intensity and naturalistic force.

Conceived as a horizontal quadro da stanza (a painting for a private interior) the composition presents the Virgin, Saint Joseph, and the Christ Child in intimate communion with the young Saint John the Baptist. The Baptist kneels before the Holy Family bearing a reed cross inscribed with the words Ecce Agnus ('Behold the Lamb'), the prophetic declaration identifying Christ as the savior. In traditional exegesis this acclamation, taken from the Gospel of John, signals Christ's future sacrifice; here it lends a note of gentle foreboding to an otherwise tender family exchange, encouraging the viewer to contemplate simultaneously the Incarnation and the Passion.

Strozzi's training under Cesare Corte, a follower of Luca Cambiaso, and subsequently with the Sienese painter Pietro Sorri, who was active in Genoa between 1596 and 1598, established the foundations of his technique (D. Sanguineti, op. cit.). Yet it was his direct observation of Federico Barocci's Crucifixion in the Senarega chapel of Genoa Cathedral and, most significantly, the Circumcision painted by Peter Paul Rubens in 1605 for the church of the Gesù that transformed his approach to color and handling (ibid.). The warm, saturated palette of the present work, with its rich flesh tones and sumptuous draperies, demonstrates Strozzi's early assimilation of Rubensian colorism, while the softly modeled features and contemplative mood recall the devotional intensity of Barocci's sacred imagery.

The Virgin's pose and the tender physiognomy of the Christ Child find close parallels in documented works, including the celebrated Madonna with Christ Child and Saint John in Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, which Manzitti and others have placed among Strozzi's key achievements of the early 1620s. The present work, however, represents an earlier iteration of this compositional type; its handling is somewhat more restrained and its luminosity less dramatically contrasted than in the artist's later Genoese pictures. The influence of Giovanni Battista Paggi and the Florentine painters active in Genoa at the turn of the century is still discernible in the delicate sfumato of the faces and the refinement of the drapery folds.

Furthermore, Anna Orlando, observing what she describes as a Milanese, Borromean languor in the pose and gaze of the young Baptist, has drawn a pointed comparison with Giulio Cesare Procaccini's Saint John the Baptist with Two Putti (location unknown; A. Orlando, loc. cit.). While Procaccini is not documented in Genoa until 1618, Orlando argues that Strozzi encountered the Lombard master's style considerably earlier: documents confirm that Strozzi was in Milan in 1610-1611, and that Giovanni Carlo Doria already owned over twenty paintings by Procaccini by 1617 (ibid.). Orlando suggests that the present work represents the moment when Strozzi first encountered these Lombard models—whether through Doria's nascent collection or some earlier, undocumented exposure—and on this basis proposes a dating around the middle of the first decade of the century, rather than the years 1608-10 suggested by Manzitti (ibid.; C. Manzitti, op. cit., p. 75).

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CESARE DANDINI (FLORENCE 1596-1657) Tobias and the Angel oil on canvas 79Ω x 57æ in. (202 x 146.7 cm.) $150,000-250,000

£120,000-190,000 €130,000-210,000

PROVENANCE:

[Property from a Private Collection]; Sotheby's, London, 6 July 2000, lot 34, where acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini: Addenda al catalogo dei dipinti, Florence, 2007, pp. 17-19, fig. 14.

F. Baldassari, La pittura del Seicento a Firenze: Indice degli artisti e delle loro opere, Turin, 2009, pp. 256, 277, fig. 106.

This beautiful depiction of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael belongs to a small, coherent group of large-scale biblical and mythological scenes painted by Cesare Dandini in the mid- to late 1630s. The other principal works in this vein are Rinaldo Impeding the Suicide of Armida (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) and Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro at the Well of Midian (fig. 1; Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; see S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini, Turin, 1996, pp. 8587, 98-99, cat. nos. 34, 45).

Like those canvases, the present painting exemplifies the refined elegance that Filippo Baldinucci described in his Notizie as Dandini’s maniera vaga: graceful, classicizing figures articulated in poised, almost theatrical gestures, and enlivened by a sumptuous palette of ochre, scarlet, azure, and gray. This aesthetic represents the culmination of a Florentine current initiated in the 1590s by Jacopo da Empoli and Francesco Curradi, and developed in the following decades by Giovanni Bilivert and Cristofano Allori—artists whose influence is evident here, as in Bilivert’s treatment of the same subject in the Church of the Certosa del Galluzzo, Florence (see G. Cantelli, Repertorio della Pittura Fiorentina del Seicento, Florence, 1983, cat. no. 521).

The subject derives from the Book of Tobit, an Old Testament narrative that enjoyed particular favor in Counter-Reformation Italy. According to the biblical account, the pious Tobit of Nineveh, having been struck blind, sends his son Tobias to collect a debt in a distant land. The young man sets out accompanied by a stranger who offers to guide him on the perilous journey—unbeknownst to Tobias, the Archangel Raphael in disguise. Along the way, Raphael instructs the youth to catch a large fish from the Tigris and preserve its heart, liver, and gall, which will later prove instrumental: the organs are used to exorcise a demon and, upon their return, to restore Tobit's sight. The journey thus becomes an allegory of divine providence, with the angel serving as both protector and healer. Dandini depicts the most commonly represented moment in the narrative—Tobias walking beside his celestial guardian, the miraculous fish in hand—a composition that allowed artists to explore the dynamic interplay between mortal youth and heavenly messenger, and one that held obvious appeal as an image of safe passage and filial devotion.

The high esteem afforded to these grand Baroque narratives is underscored

by Carlo de’ Medici’s commission, in the mid-1630s, of a cycle of biblical and mythological scenes for the ground floor of the Casino di San Marco. Among the pictures produced for this celebrated ensemble was Dandini’s aforementioned Rinaldo Impeding the Suicide of Armida, confirming the stylistic proximity of the present canvas to the artist’s most important ducal undertakings.

Fig. 1 Cesare Dandini, Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro at the Well of Midian, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

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LUCA GIORDANO (NAPLES 1634-1705) Pittacus

oil on canvas 44Ω x 36Ω in. (113.1 x 92.7 cm.) $100,000-150,000

£75,000-110,000 €86,000-130,000

PROVENANCE:

Private collection, New York.

Anonymous sale; Parke-Bernet, New York, 6 April 1960, lot 26.

Art market, London, where acquired by the present owner.

Pittacus of Mytilene (c. 640-c. 570 BC) was a statesman and philosopher, honored as one of the Seven Sages of Greece. After helping overthrow the tyrant Melanchrus, he was elected aisymnetes of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, a position he held for ten years. Renowned for his pursuit of political stability and legal reform, Pittacus earned a lasting reputation for his wisdom and moderation.

This painting is one of Luca Giordano’s highly realistic portraits of philosophers, closely following the tradition of Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), whose depictions of philosophers, saints and hermits were popularized in seventeenth-century Naples. Giordano produced these half-length figures largely in the middle decades of the century. As noted by Nicola Spinosa, Giordano’s philosophers can be divided into two phases: those from the 1650s are directly related to Ribera’s dry and vigorous types of circa 1630, while in the 1660s, Giordano began painting from life, using models he found in the streets of Naples (N. Spinosa, in Luca Giordano 1634-1705, exhibition catalogue, Naples, 2001, p. 68). The present painting is datable to the 1660s, with other examples from this period including Crates, dated around 1660 (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte, Rome; fig. 1) and The fish eater, also dated circa 1660 (Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna; fig. 2).

Fig. 1 Luca Giordano, Crates, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte, Rome.

Two other autograph versions of this composition are known, one in the Kunsthalle Hamburg (inv. no. HK-782) and another formerly with the Walpole Gallery (see O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: nuove ricerche e indediti, Naples 2003, pp. 37, 28, no. A012). There are very slight differences in Pittacus's depiction in each painting, but they all include the same astronomical symbols on the piece of paper he holds: the symbol of Venus at upper left, a sun-moon opposition chart to the right, and a horoscope diagram of the twelve empty houses at lower left. The Hamburg picture, however, also includes a signature above the horoscope diagram.

The identification of this philosopher has been subject to some debate. The Hamburg picture was first identified as Archimedes by Creighton Gilbert in 1961 (C. Gilbert, Baroque Paintings of Naples, exhibition catalogue, Sarasota, 1961, no. 31). It was then described as Heraclitus by Alfred Hentzen in 1964, citing the astronomical symbols on the sheet of paper (A. Hentzen, ‘Erwerbungen für die Gemälde-Galerie im Jahre 1963‘, Jahrbuch d. Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, IX, 1964, pp. 165-167). In 1966, Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi proposed Democritus, pointing to the mocking expression, but they later corrected their identification to Pittacus in 1992 (O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano.

L'opera completa, Naples, 1992, I, p. 255, no. A27, II, p. 476, fig. 97).

We are grateful to Giuseppe Scavizzi for endorsing the attribution to Giordano on the basis of photographs and for proposing a date in the 1660s (written communication 6 December 2025).

Fig. 2 Luca Giordano, The fish eater, Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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BARTOLOMEO MENDOZZI (LEONESSA, RIETI C. 1600-1644 ROME) Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery oil on canvas 37æ x 51¡ in. (95.8 x 130.5 cm.) $80,000-120,000

£60,000-90,000 €69,000-100,000

PROVENANCE:

Anonymous sale; Schuler, Zurich, 17 September 1999, lot 3278. with Adam Williams Fine Art, New York, from whom acquired by the present owner.

LITERATURE:

M. Pulini, Bartolomeo Mendozzi da Leonessa. Un Maestro del Seicento tra l’Incredulità, il caso Ducamps e i nuovi documenti, Rimini, 2022, pp. 79-80, no. 18, illustrated.

Among the most accomplished Caravaggesque painters active in Rome during the second quarter of the seventeenth century, Bartolomeo Mendozzi was known until recently by the sobriquet ‘Maestro dell’Incredulità di San Tommaso’ (‘Master of the Incredulity of Saint Thomas’). First published by Massimo Pulini, this Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery dates to the height of Mendozzi’s career in Rome, the early 1630s, and exemplifies the dramatic chiaroscuro, saturated palette, and psychological intensity that distinguish the artist's finest compositions (M. Pulini, loc. cit.).

The subject is drawn from the Gospel of John (8:1-11), in which the Scribes and Pharisees bring before Christ a woman accused of adultery, demanding judgment according to Mosaic Law. Christ's response—‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’—disperses the accusers and spares her life. Rather than depicting the large crowd typically seen in treatments of this subject, Mendozzi reduces the narrative to three half-length protagonists pressed close to the picture plane: a helmeted soldier at center, the bound adulteress at right, and Christ at left. Their features emerge from deep shadow under a strong raking light. The woman's downcast gaze and bound wrists capture a suspended moment of reprieve, while Christ's gesture conveys both judgment and mercy.

As Pulini observes, Mendozzi reprises the figure of the soldier from his Denial of Saint Peter (Macerata, Pinacoteca Buonaccorsi; ibid.). A second treatment of the present subject, first published by Gianni Papi, repeats this soldier almost exactly, although the faces of Christ and the adulteress differ markedly (fig. 1; location unknown; see G. Papi, ‘Il Maestro dell'Incredulità di San Tommaso’, Arte Cristiana, DCCLXXIX, 1997). Christ’s vibrant red mantle creates a dramatic focal point within a palette otherwise defined by warm ochres and deep shadow; this mantle is comparable to the saturated reds in the artist's Judith Beheading Holofernes (Dorotheum, Vienna, 23 May 2023, lot 54).

In 1997, Papi assembled a number of paintings centered around the Incredulity of Saint Thomas in the Palazzo Valentini, Rome, from which the thenanonymous master derived his placeholder name. Describing the artist as ‘a sort of alter ego of Valentin’, Papi highlighted the painter's debt to Jusepe de Ribera, Bartolomeo Manfredi, and the French Caravaggist Nicolas Tournier and the Flemish Nicolas Régnier. (F. Curti, ‘Bartolomeo Mendozzi alias Maestro dell’Incredulità di San Tommaso’, in A. Cosma and Y. Primarosa (eds.), Barocco in chiaroscuro, Rome, 2020, p. 40; G. Papi, Spogliando modelli e alzando lumi: Scritti su Caravaggio e l’ambiente caravaggesco, Naples, 2014, p. 185).

The identification of this anonymous master was established by Giuseppe Porzio’s attribution of two lateral canvases in Rieti Cathedral: the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen and the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. An eighteenth-century inventory ascribed these paintings to ‘Mendozzi’, a reference Francesca Curti subsequently connected to the painter Bartolomeo Mendozzi (born circa 1600 in Leonessa), who was active in Rome and central Italy until the mid-1640s (F. Curti, op. cit., p. 42; see G. Porzio, A Rediscovered Concert, the Master of the Incredulity of Saint Thomas and Jean Ducamps, Florence, 2015). The presence of Mendozzi’s paintings in the celebrated Giustiniani collection, alongside a 1635 document describing him as a pupil of Bartolomeo Manfredi, attests to the high esteem the artist enjoyed during his lifetime (ibid., p. 44).

We are grateful to Massimo Pulini (written communication, 5 November 2025) and Tommaso Borgogelli (written communication, 3 November 2025) for endorsing the attribution to Bartolomeo Mendozzi on the basis of highresolution digital photographs.

Fig. 1 Bartolomeo Mendozzi, Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, present location unknown.

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CIRCLE OF SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA (CREMONA C. 1532-1625 PALERMO)

Portrait of a gentleman, three-quarter-length, in a black doublet and hose, leaning on a green-draped tabletop inscribed and dated 'Ao 1563 / P · M / ÆTA. 21.' (upper left) oil on canvas 43¡ x 32æ in. (110.2 x 83.2 cm.) $60,000-80,000

£45,000-60,000 €52,000-68,000

PROVENANCE:

Art market, Paris, 2006, where acquired by the present owner.

Set against a sober gray background, the young man portrayed in this refined portrait stands with one hand resting on a table and the other placed on his hip. He turns his head to face the viewer with a confident gaze that belies his youth. Likely a member of the Spanish Court, he wears the fashion of his time: a black, velvet doublet embellished in gold cord, with a small ruff at the collar and additional cuffs at the sleeves and matching paned hose. The hilt of a small sword is seen on his side.

An inscription at upper left records the sitter’s age of 21 years, as well as the date 1563. The significance of the letters `P’ and `M’ remains a mystery, although they might provide a clue as to the yet-unknown artist's identity. Notably, this work was painted just four years after 1559, the year that Sofonisba Anguissola was invited to the court of King Philip II of Spain in Madrid. There, she became attendant to Philip’s eldest daughter, Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and lady-in-waiting to his third wife, Elisabeth of Valois. Sofonisba’s role was teacher of drawing and painting, permitting her to complete portraits of almost all members of the Spanish royal family. The present portrait shares several of the qualities that define Sofonisba’s highly personal style, such as the soft modelling, sensitive rendering of light, and emphasis on capturing the essence of the sitter’s personality.

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT TEXAS COLLECTION

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LUCA FORTE (NAPLES C.1615-BEFORE 1670)

A planter with grape vines, watermelon, figs, pomegranate, and gourds with insects and a bird in a landscape signed with initials 'L. F.' (on the watermelon, lower right) oil on copper 12º x 10¬ in. (31.1 x 26.9 cm.) $150,000-250,000

£120,000-190,000 €130,000-210,000

PROVENANCE:

Anonymous sale; Christie's, Amsterdam, 20 June 1989, lot 128.

Private collection, Holland. with Newhouse Galleries, New York, by November 1989, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

New York, Newhouse Galleries, An Exhibition of European Paintings from the 16th to the 19th Century, 3 October - 3 November 1989, no. 4.

LITERATURE:

G. De Vito, 'Un diverso avvio per il primo tempo della natura morta a Napoli', Ricerche sul '600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti per La Storia dell'Arte, 1990, p. 122, fig. 31, pl.

VI. N. Spinosa, Pittura del Seicento a Napoli: Da Mattia Preti a Luca Giordano, Natura in Posa, Naples, 2011, p. 261, under no. 279.

Luca Forte was one of the leading still-life painters in Naples at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and is particularly significant for having brought the naturalism of Caravaggio to the genre. Unlike Caravaggio, Forte introduced landscape backgrounds to his still lifes, as seen in the present painting. This intimately-scaled copper panel displays refined brushwork typical of Forte's technique. Giuseppe de Vito proposed that this picture, together with a closely comparable copper depicting red grapes, now in The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (fig. 1, inv. no. 86.PC.51), were conceived as a pendant pair (loc. cit.). This suggestion was later endorsed by Nicola Spinosa, who dated the works to the 1640s (loc. cit.). Giuseppe Porzio, to whom we are grateful for endorsing the attribution, notes that there is no doubt the two coppers were conceived of in parallel, but may not have been pendants considering the differences in signature (Private communication, October 2025).

Little is known of Forte’s life and artistic training, save scant details preserved in a handful of historical documents. In 1639, he served as a witness by signing the marriage license of fellow artist Aniello Falcone. Forte must have belonged to the circle of painters around Falcone, whose studio served as an informal academy of still-life painting between 1630 and 1640. This association is further supported by the 1692 inventory of paintings in the Palazzo Tarsia Spinelli, which records a collaboration between the two artists, as well as an additional twenty paintings by Forte, attesting to his considerable success as a still-life painter. In a letter, dated 25 September 1640, to the collector Don Antonio Ruffo, Forte described his own artistic prowess: ‘The painting in question depicts various kinds of fruit, painted from large to small, a work no less curious than delightful, and indeed one that has been executed with the smallest of brushes.

In it are found details resembling miniature painting, since it is impossible to convey their effect on paper’

Fig. 1 Luca Forte, Still life with grapes and other fruit, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

(for original text see P.A. Davia, ‘Galleria Ruffo nel Secolo XVII in Messina (con lettere di pittore ed altri documenti inedita)', Bolletino D’Arte, 1916, p. 61).

The remaining letters, penned between 1640 and 1650, describe the incredible sums Forte’s works demanded--sometimes as much as 200 ducati.

PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED COLLECTOR

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JEAN SIMÉON CHARDIN (PARIS 1699-1779)

The Diligent Mother (‘La Mère laborieuse’) signed ‘Chardin’ (center right, on the back wall above the teapot) oil on canvas 20¿ x 15æ in. (51.1 x 40 cm.) $1,000,000-2,000,000

£750,000-1,500,000 €860,000-1,700,000

PROVENANCE:

Thomas Major (1720–1799), Paris and London, by 1751; his sale, anonymous auction house, London, [day unknown] April 1751, 2nd day, lot 38, where acquired for 23 gns. by, Charles Wyndham (1710-1763), 2nd Earl of Egremont, PC, Petworth House, West Sussex, and by descent until 1927.

John Davison Rockefeller III (1906-1978) and Blanchette Ferry Rockefeller née Hooker (1909-1992), New York, from 1927.

Private collection, New York, acquired through Eugene V. Thaw, New York.

LITERATURE:

C. Collins Baker, Catalogue of the Petworth Collection, in the Possession of Lord Leconfield, London, 1920, no. 561.

G. Wildenstein, Chardin, Paris, 1933, p. 161, no. 96.

W. Georges, ‘L’Art Français et l’Esprit de Suite’, La Renaissance, March-August 1937, p. 9.

G. Wildenstein, Chardin, Oxford, 1963, p. 185, no. 195, fig. 88.

P. Rosenberg, ed., Chardin 1699–1779, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1979, pp. 263-264, under no. 84, illustrated.

P. Rosenberg, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Chardin, Paris, 1983, pp. 98-99, no. 118 A, illustrated, as a 'copie retouchée'.

P. Rosenberg and R. Temperini, Chardin. Suivi du catalogue des oeuvres, Paris, 1999, p.

250, no. 119 A, illustrated, as a 'copie retouchée'.

D. Ludke, et al., Jean Simeon Chardin: Werk, Herkunft, Wirkung, Karlsruhe, 1999, p. 129, note 4, under no. 20.

P. Rosenberg, ed., Chardin, exhibition catalogue, London and New York, 2000, p. 244, under no. 60, as a 'reworked copy' by Chardin that sold in the 1751 Major sale in London.

The Diligent Mother (‘La Mère laborieuse’) is an exceptionally well-documented replica of one of the most famous compositions in Chardin’s oeuvre. Chardin’s first version of the subject was exhibited with a pendant depicting Saying Grace (‘Le Bénédicité’) at the Paris Salon of 1740, where it was well received by critics and the public alike (fig. 1). Several months later, on 27 November 1740, Chardin was officially presented to Louis XV at Versailles, and in honor of the occasion he offered the two paintings as a gift to the king; they have remained in the French national collections ever since, eventually transferring to the Louvre, where they have been displayed since 1845. Throughout most of the 19th century and to this day, the two paintings have been regarded as quintessential examples of the artist’s work.

In The Diligent Mother, a young mother, her scissors attached to a ribbon at her waist, is seated on a chair from which hangs a work bag. Wearing a bonnet familiar from many of Chardin’s paintings, and rose-and-blue bedroom slippers, she examines some embroidery with her young daughter. Beside them is a yarnwinder, a skein of wool and balls of wool in various colors. A bobbin lies on the tiled floor and a box-shaped pin cushion sits near it. In front of the pin cushion rests a contented pug, 'as compact as a block', in the words of Pierre Rosenberg.

At right, a teapot, cup and saucer sit on the mantelpiece, beneath a candelabra; a tall folding screen blocks daylight from the half-opened door at the back of the room. Both the present composition and its original companion uphold the social values of domestic stability and good child-rearing. Saying Grace conveys the treasured values of honor, piety and the sacredness of family life through its depiction of a maid leading her two young charges in giving thanks before a meal. Similarly, The Diligent Mother reproduces the comforts of a bourgeois Parisian household while depicting in its modest silence the relationship of a dutiful mother teaching the ‘domestic arts’ to her obedient child.

Fig. 1 Jean Siméon Chardin, Le Bénédicité, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Although it should be counted a major rediscovery, the present Diligent Mother was not entirely unknown before its recent rehabilitation; indeed, it was acquired during Chardin’s lifetime by Sir Charles Wyndham (1710-1763), 2nd Earl of Egremont of Petworth House in West Sussex, at auction in London in 1751, and has appeared in the literature on the artist periodically ever since.

However, until its comparatively recent cleaning and restoration, its fine quality was largely hidden. Layers of old varnish, yellowing over centuries, obscured its merits – even Chardin’s signature, now perfectly apparent, was undetectable beneath the film of grime – and so, when it was referenced by scholars, it was generally as a copy or a lesser production of Chardin’s workshop.

The prime version of The Diligent Mother was engraved by François-Bernard Lépicié (1698-1755) and published in December 1740, four months after the Salon ended and just weeks after it was presented to the king. The print included a caption identifying that it is 'After the original Painting in the King’s gallery by Chardin/1741' (as did Lépicié’s subsequent engraving after Saying Grace, published four years later). A verse by Lépicié accompanies the print, stressing a message of diligence and the value of labor, perhaps in stricter terms than Chardin’s affectionate painting really suggests: ‘A trifle distracts you my girl: Yesterday this foliage was done, By each stitch I can see How your mind drifted away.

Believe me, avoid laziness Remember this one simple truth: That steadiness, prudence and work Are more valued than beauty and wealth.’

Unlike Saying Grace, versions of which Chardin exhibited three times at the Salons – in 1740, 1746, and 1761 – he exhibited The Diligent Mother only once,

in 1740. At least four autograph versions of Saying Grace are known today, each with very small variations: apart from the original, gifted to the king and today in the Louvre, there is a version in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, acquired in the late 1760s or early 1770s by Catherine the Great, which is dated ‘1744’ (although not signed) and may have been the picture Chardin exhibited at the Salon in 1746; another version of lesser quality but certainly autograph was in the collection of the 19th century collector Dr. Louis La Caze and given to the Louvre with his bequest in 1869; and a fine version, formerly in the collection of the Earls of Wemyss, and today in the collection of the late Michel DavidWeill, New York, who acquired it in 2015. This last served as the pendant to the present painting until the two were separated at auction in 1751. In addition, a very loosely handled preliminary version of the subject, usually referred to as a ‘sketch’, is in the Veil-Picard collection, Paris. Chardin returned to the subject of Saying Grace for a final time, exhibiting a horizontal variant of the composition in the Salon of 1761, his entry reproduced in a marginal illustration of the Salon livret by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin; a copy of the lost original is today in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

Of particular interest for us is yet another version of Saying Grace – a workshop copy of the 1740 original – which was commissioned from Chardin by Count Tessin along with a copy of The Diligent Mother and sent to Sweden in 1741, where the pair remains to this day in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Each was purchased for the modest sum of 180 livres (as opposed to comparable originals from Chardin’s hand for which the artist charged 600 livres). Both paintings bear inscriptions on the reverse of their respective canvases identifying them as copies made in 1741. Produced at the artist’s request by assistants, The Diligent Mother (like its companion) is of notably inferior quality to autograph versions of the composition, including the present painting. It is not known why Tessin – a distinguished collector who acquired several masterpieces by Chardin directly from the artist – agreed to accept two copies by assistants, but it was likely a question of timing. Chardin worked in a famously slow and deliberate manner and would not be rushed: as the artist wrote to the Count in 1746, 'I take my time because I have developed a habit of not leaving my works until to my eyes there is nothing left to be desired, and I hold myself to this more rigorously than ever in order to uphold the favorable opinion with which Count Tessin honors me'. Since, presumably, Tessin wanted replicas of the famous pair of paintings in the royal collection, and wanted them ready to be sent to Stockholm in a consolidated shipment with other paintings (including Chardin’s The Morning Toilet) that was leaving from Paris, via Rouen, in late 1741, he had little choice but to settle for quick copies that could be readied to schedule. The present painting is of an entirely higher level of execution than the Stockholm copy made for Tessin. While Pierre Rosenberg has published it as a 'copie retouchée', this term had a specific meaning for Chardin’s contemporaries. In reference to a version of Chardin’s La Gouvernante (at Tatton Park, Cheshire, fig. 2), which had been sold in May 1745 as 'une copie, retouchée dans plusieurs parties par Chardin', Alastair Laing noted that to 18th century collectors 'this did not mean a copy produced by another hand or in Chardin’s studio, which he had retouched, but an autograph replica, slightly altered by the artist' (A. Laing, In Trust for the Nation, London, 1995, p. 192).

Fig. 2 Jean Siméon Chardin, La Gouvernante, National Trust, Tatton Park.

The popularity of Chardin’s composition was no doubt greatly enhanced by the presence of the prime version in the royal collection, accounting for a demand from collectors for replicas. However, it was standard practice for the artist to make several versions of his best and most popular genre scenes, and even many of his still lifes. Apart from the aforementioned versions of Saying Grace, for example, six nearly identical autograph versions of Chardin’s beloved composition The Young Draftsman have been accounted for (the best in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; and a private collection, New York), and four autograph versions of its companion, The Embroiderer (the best in Stockholm; and a private collection, Russia).

Therefore, the emergence of a second autograph version of The Diligent Mother should come as little surprise. (A third version of the composition is recorded in Chardin’s estate sale, 6 March 1780, lot 14; however, its whereabouts today are unknown and it has not been seen since 1877). The delight of the present painting is its fine quality. Now that it has been cleaned, it is apparent that the present Diligent Mother is from the hand of Chardin himself.

The history of the present painting and its former pendant is well-known and well documented. Scholars have tended to focus their attention on the two British aristocrats who acquired the paintings as succeeding lots in a London auction in 1751: Francis Wemyss Charteris, 7th Earl of Wemyss of Gosford House, Scotland, who purchased the Saying Grace (lot 39) for £24.3, and Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont, Petworth House, who bought the present picture (in the preceding lot) for the same sum. As both pictures replicated famous originals in the Louvre; were coated in heavy, discolored varnishes that obscured their fine quality and hid the artist’s signatures; and were held in largely inaccessible country house collections where few scholars saw them in person for more than two centuries, both fell into an unexamined disregard in much of the modern literature on Chardin. In 1979, the most eminent living authority on the artist, Pierre Rosenberg, wrote of the present Diligent Mother that it 'is qualitatively better than the one in Stockholm', but, he asked, 'can one go so far as to call it an original from the hand of Chardin…?'

That this question can now be answered affirmatively finds its most compelling evidence in the identity of the first owner of the two paintings, the printmaker Thomas Major (1720-1799). It was in the sale of his collection in London in April 1751, that The Diligent Mother and its pendant were acquired by the Earls Egremont and Wemyss. The paintings had almost certainly been bought directly from Chardin himself by Major, who subsequently offered them at auction – where they were catalogued as fully autograph works by the master – and sold less than a decade after they were painted. Major had studied drawing and

etching under Hubert Gravelot before moving to Paris in 1745, where he was a pupil of the printmakers Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790) and JacquesPhilippe Le Bas (1707-1783). Cochin was Chardin’s lifelong friend and authored the tribute to the artist read before the Academy in 1780, following Chardin’s death. Le Bas was a principal engraver of Chardin’s works and owned at least two of his paintings, including the famous Cat Stalking a Partridge and a Hare Left Near a Soup Tureen, today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

(It should be noted that many of Chardin’s most active original collectors were fellow artists, as Pierre Rosenberg has shown). As Major not only apprenticed to Le Bas, but continued to act as Le Bas’ agent and dealer in London after he returned to the city in 1748, it seems likely that it was Le Bas who introduced Major (a descendent of a prominent and prosperous English family) to Chardin and facilitated the sale of Saying Grace and The Diligent Mother to the wealthy young printmaker.

The recent cleaning and restoration of Thomas Major’s Chardins confirms their quality and status. Chardin’s signatures – authentic and integral to the paint surface, and previously unobserved by scholars – were revealed on both canvases. The ex-Wemyss Saying Grace proved to be in exceptionally good condition, with its thick impasto and dry, chalky, zinc-white passages intact.

The Diligent Mother, which was relined to prevent the craquelure of its paint surface from lifting, retains less of its impasto, but displays the little touches and flicks of the brush for which the artist is famed. The mother’s patient and affectionate gaze, the look of intense concentration from her little daughter, the rich and loving attention that the artist lavished on each fall and fold of heavy fabrics, the brilliant and subtle rendering of different shades of white, the choreographic interplay of hands – all are characteristic examples of Chardin’s rare and unexcelled skill.

We are grateful to Dr. Colin B. Bailey, who examined this painting first-hand, for confirming that it is an autograph version by Chardin of his original composition.

41

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THE LE NAIN BROTHERS (LAON C. 1607-C.1677 PARIS)

Portrait of Jean-Arneaud de Preyer (1598-1672), Marquis de Trésville, full-length, in a suit of armor holding a rod, with a curtain and balcony beyond signed and dated 'Lenain · fecit · 1644.' (on the column, at right) oil on canvas 81º x 54º in. (206.5 x 138 cm.) $400,000-600,000

£300,000-450,000 €350,000-510,000

PROVENANCE:

Comtesse de Mont-Réal, Rueil-Malmaison, by 1934. Édouard des Courrières (1896-1987), Tangier.

Anonymous sale; Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 12 May 1950, lot 76, as Antoine Le Nain.

Acquired by the present owner, circa 1950.

EXHIBITED:

Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Les Peintres de la réalité, 1934, no. 65, as Antoine Le Nain.

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Deux siècles de gloire militaire, April-June 1935, no.

40, as Antoine Le Nain.

Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Cent portraits d'hommes, 1952, no. 54, as Antoine Le Nain.

Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum; Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Lens, Musée du Louvre, The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth-century France, 22 May - 11 September 2016; 8 October - 29 January 2017; 22 March - 26 June 2017, no. 32, as Antoine Le Nain.

LITERATURE:

Ph. Diolé, 'Les peintres de la réalité, le XVIIe siècle inconnu', Beaux-Arts, 30 November 1934, p. 2.

P. du Colombier, 'Les peintres de la réalité', Candide, 6 December 1934, p. 6.

P. Fierens, 'Les peintres de la réalité', Les Nouvelles littéraires des arts, des sciences et de la société, 15 December 1934, p. 2.

(Probably) H. Puvis de Chavannes, 'Chronique artistique: Les peintres de la réalité', Les Arts, December 1934, p. 22.

C. Sterling, 'L'exposition des peintres de la réalité en France au XVIIe siècle', Bulletin des musées de France, January 1935, p. 5.

J. Pannier, 'Les peintres de la réalité et le protestantisme', Le Christianisme au XXe siècle, no. 1, 3 January 1935, p. 5.

P. Fierens, 'Réalistes français du XVIIe siècle, III', Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, January 1935, p. 3, as Antoine Le Nain.

A. Watt, 'Notes from Paris', Apollo, January-June 1935, p. 41, as Antoine Le Nain.

P. Alfassa, 'Peintres de la réalité au XVIIe siècle', La Revue de Paris, 15 January 1935, p.

406, as Antoine Le Nain.

L. Gillet, 'Å l'exposition de l'Orangerie: les peintres de la réalité', La Revue des Deux Mondes, January 1935, p. 208.

C. Sterling, 'Les Peintres de la réalité en France - II', La Revue de l'Art, LXVII, FebruaryMay 1935, pp. 51 and 56, illustrated, as Antoine le Nain.

D. Lord, 'Les peintres de la réalité en France au XVIIe siècle', The Burlington Magazine, March 1935, p. 141, as Attributed to Antoine Le Nain.

M. Davies, 'Signed Lenains', The Burlington Magazine, June 1935, p. 294, no. 12, as Antoine Le Nain.

(Probably) A. Sambon, 'Les Le Nain', Bulletin Trimestriel de la Chambre Internationale des Experts d'Art, No. 7, April-June 1936, n.p., no. 9, under Antoine Le Nain.

G. Isarlo, 'Les Trois Le Nain et leur suite', La Renaissance, March 1938, p. 4-5, fig. 4 (detail), as Antoine Le Nain.

P. Erlanger, Les Peintres de la réalité, Paris, 1946, pp. 14, 32 and 35, illustrated, as Antoine Le Nain.

M. Florisoone, Portraits français, Paris, 1946, p. 68, as Antoine Le Nain.

(Probably) U. Moussali, 'Les Le Nain, portraitistes de cour', Arts, December 1948, p. I. A.F. Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500 to 1700, Baltimore, 1954, p. 218, note 173 [4th, revised ed., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1980, p. 432, note 119; 5th ed., revised

by R. Beresford, New Haven and London, 1999, p. 291, note 119].

J. Thuillier, 'Documents concernant les frères Le Nain', Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français, 1963, p. 179.

G. Janneau, La pienture française au XVIIe siècle, P. Cailler, ed., Paris, 1965, p. 89, as Anotine Le Nain.

F. Gebiln, L'epoque Henri IV et Louis XIII, Paris, 1969, p.72.

J. Thuillier, 'Notes sur les frères Le Nain portraitistes', in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art Presented to Anthony Blunt on His 60th Birthday, London and New York, 1967, pp. 151-152 , note 15; 152 .

J. Thullier, Les Frères Le Nain, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1978, pp. 50, 213-214, illustrated, as Le Nain Brothers, location unknown.

A.F. Blunt, 'The Le Nain Exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris: ‘Le Nain Problems', The Burlington Magazine, December 1978, pp. 873, as Antoine Le Nain, as lost.

J.-P. Cuzin, 'A Hypothesis Concerning the Le Nain Brothers', The Burlington Magazine, December 1978, p. 876.

H. Loyrette, 'Expositions. Grand Palais: Les frères Le Nain', La revue du Louvre, 1978, p. 298.

J. Thuillier, 'Le Nain: Leçons d'une exposition', La revue du Louvre, 1979, pp. 158 and 160, fig. 2.

J.-P. Cuzin, 'Les frères Le Nain: La part de Mathieu', Paragone, No. 349/351, March/May 1979, p. 67, as possibly by Antoine Le Nain, and lost.

A.F. Blunt, Art and Architecture in France 1500 to 1700, New York, 1980, p. 432, note 119.

A.F. Blunt, 'French Seventeenth-Century Painting: The Literature of the Last Ten Years', The Burlington Magazine, November 1982, p. 706.

G. de Fiore, ed., Le Nain: Regards sur la peinture, Paris, 1988, p.3.

A. Matteoli, La problematica sui fratelli Le Nain e loro cerchia, Pisa, 1990, pp. 39, 41, 68, 78, no. 17, as Antoine Le Nain.

P. Rosenberg, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Les Nain, Paris, 1993, pp. 8, 69, 93-94, no. 86; 93, Illustrated, as location unknown.

J.-P. Cuzin, 'Les frères Le Nain: Le mystère des portraits', Hommage à Michel Laclotte: Études sur la pienture du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance, Milan and Paris, 1994, pp.480-481, 483, 490, 492, note 7, fig. 549, as one of the Le Nain brothers.

N. MacGregor, 'Le Nain', in The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, XIX, p. 148, as Le Nain Brothers.

A.F. Blunt, Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700, p. 291, note 119.

P. Georgel, Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, Orangerie, 1934: Les Peintres de la Réalité, 2006-2007, pp. 21-22, 24, 206-207, 341, no. 65, illustrated.

J. Miqueu, Le comte de Trévile, Capitaine de Mousquetaires: De la Légende à la réalité, Navvareaux, 2008, n.p., illustrated.

J.-P. Cuzin, Figures de la Réalité: Caravagesques français, Georges de La Tour, les frères Le Nain …, Paris, 2010, pp. 286, 296, 302, 304 and 315, note 7 and 309, fig. 293, as one of the Le Nain Brothers and lost.

C. Dickerson and E. Bell, in, The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth Century France, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, New Haven and London, 2016, pp. 23-24, 99, 124, 216, 228-231, 398, no. 32, illustrated, as Antoine Le Nain.

J. Thuillier, Les frères Le Nain, Dijon, 2016, pp. 24, 134-135, 137, 143, 260, 266-267, 305, 307 and 332 notes 15 and 23, illustrated, as Le Nain Brothers and lost.

J.-P. Cuzin, 'Le Nain, tout court', Revue de l’Art, 2016, p. 53, note 21, figs. 10-11, as one of the Le Nain Brothers.

X.F. Salomon, 'Review: The Brothers Le Nain', The Burlington Magazine, CLVIII, August 2016, p. 676.

Fig. 1 The Le Nain Brothers, Three Men and a Boy, The National Gallery, London.

Much ink has been expended by scholars in trying to distinguish the hands of the artistic collective that were the Le Nain Brothers. Born in Laon in Picardy, Antoine Le Nain (c.1598-1648), Louis Le Nain (c.1600/5-1648) and Matthieu Le Nain (c.1607-1677) had a jointly-held workshop in Paris. In the question of assigning individual authorship to their paintings there is no clear resolution.

Unmarried and childless, the Le Nain brothers lived together and shared a studio their entire lives, conditions which encouraged their tightly interwoven manner of production. As the studio was headed by Antoine, he is presumed to have been the eldest. The brothers produced altarpieces and religious paintings; small, multi-figural pictures on copper or wood of musicians or children; portraits – almost all of which are unidentified, apart from the present portrait – and the peasant scenes for which the brothers are today best known and revered. They achieved considerable success, received commissions from the Church and Crown and were founding members of the Académie Royale, established just two months before the near simultaneous deaths of Antoine and Louis, presumably in the same epidemic. Some of their paintings – including the present lot – are signed, but when they are, it is always simply ‘Le Nain’. As the connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette noted in 1750, the brothers 'were so perfectly harmonized in their work that it is almost impossible to distinguish what each had done in the same painting, as they worked together, and rarely released a painting from the studio where [each] had not put their hand.'

The present painting is unique among the surviving works of the Le Nain brothers: it is their only signed and dated portrait to have come down to us, and the only portrait with a securely identified sitter. As such, 'it serves as a cornerstone for future research on this least-understood aspect of their production' (Dickerson and Bell, 2016, p. 228). This is a particular irony, as noted

by Colin Bailey, since 'during their lifetimes, the Le Nain were known primarily

as portraitists – an aspect of their oeuvre that has survived hardly at all…'

(Dickerson and Bell, 2016, p. xiv). Documents provide an idea of how much the Le Nain relied on portraiture for their livelihood. Nearly 100 portraits – in various techniques and formats, male and female, bust and full-length – were inventoried in Mathieu’s estate after his death, and all are likely to have been painted by him or his brothers. Several prestigious commissions are recorded: Antoine was chosen in 1632 to paint a group portrait of the échevins of Paris (lost), as well as their corresponding individual portraits. Mathieu is recorded as having painted a portrait of Anne of Austria and another of Cardinal Mazarin (both lost). In the novel Les galanteries de la cour (1644) by Louis Moreau du Bail – a popular roman à clef – the Brothers Le Nain appear under the lightest of disguises: the character representing Antoine is described as 'the most successful Painter in Paris for the true likeness of his portraits, done from life,' while Mathieu is said to 'cede nothing to his brothers, as he produces wonders; he knows perfectly how to make his portraits resemble the faces he paints…'. In Claude Leleu’s Histoire de Laon, a manuscript account written before the author’s death in 1726, Antoine is said to have 'excelled at miniatures and small portraits” while Louis “succeeded at half-length portraits, as well as portraits of heads.'

Yet apart from the present painting, no conventional portrait by the brothers is today identified (although x-rays of a number of their genre scenes reveal that the brothers frequently painted over previously used canvases which bare traces of portraits beneath). The famous Three Men and a Boy in the National Gallery, London (fig. 1), is certainly a half-length triple portrait – probably depicting the brothers themselves – but it is unsigned and unfinished. The Painter’s Studio (Bute Collection, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute), is a tiny, beautiful genre scene that likely depicts the three brothers in their workshop, along with their two older brothers, Isaac II and Nicolas, standing behind them and, resting on the floor

Fig. 2 Antoine Le Nain, The musical reunion, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

beside the easel, a portrait of their deceased father. Beyond these two atypical works, a number of their genre scenes of peasants, musicians and guardsmen include figures rendered with such specificity that we might presume they represent informal portrayals of actual sitters.

The present portrait – signed and dated ‘Lenain-fecit-1644’ – has been traditionally identified as of Jean-Arnaud de Peyrer, comte de Tréville (1598-1672).

Tréville, also called the marquis de Troisvilles, was captain of the Mousquetaires de la Gardes, or royal musketeers, the company entrusted with protecting the king and his properties. When Louis XIII armed the company with muskets in 1622 they became known as ‘The Musketeers.’ Born in Oloron-Sainte-Marie in southwestern France to a prominent and well-to-do family, Tréville entered the army as a cadet in 1616 and, by 1625, had joined the Mousquetaires, being promoted to lieutenant in 1632 and to their captain two years later.

Tréville’s life was as swashbuckling as that of the character named after him in Alexandre Dumas’s famous adventure novel The Three Musketeers (1844).

He fought valiantly in the Battle of La Rochelle in 1629 and would later be appointed one of the king’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber. Having crossed Cardinal Richelieu by aligning himself with the queen, Anne of Austria – the cardinal’s nemesis – Tréville became embroiled in a failed plot to overthrow Richelieu, and was sent into exile in December 1642. However, luck was on his side: Richelieu died almost immediately afterward; Louis XIII reprieved Tréville from exile just before his own death in May 1643; and Anne of Austria – now regent for the young Louis XIV – rewarded Tréville for his loyalty by making him a count. The Le Nain’s grand, full-length portrait of him dates from the following year and may have been made to commemorate the sitter’s new title.

As Dickerson and Bell observed, he does not wear the emblematic musketeer’s

cross on his armor nor carry a musket in the portrait, likely because he had had to resign the company in the wake of his downfall in 1642. It is likely that Tréville turned to the Le Nain to paint his portrait through the brothers’ associations with Anne of Austria, whose own portrait had been painted by Mathieu. Although the present painting does not appear in the posthumous inventory of Tréville’s widow, Anne de Guillon, its first documented owner was Tréville’s direct descendant, the comtesse de Mont-Réal, providing strong support for its traditional identification, which has been universally accepted.

This ambitious, grand-scale portrait perfectly embodies its subject. Tréville confronts the viewer with a direct, self-confident gaze and a swaggering, handon-hip pose, befitting his station and military success. He appears on a grand marble balcony and dominates the setting. Every inch of the painting displays the Le Nains' mastery of elaborate textures and patterns – from the cut velvet of a great swath of drapery that frames Tréville’s imposing form, the intricate lace that adorns his boots and collar, the leatherwork of his boots and gloves, and the tooled metalwork of the armor, to the fine rendering of his hair and beard, the shimmer of his pearl earring and the carefully observed grain of his wooden walking stick with its silver handle and tip.

In most of the early literature, the painting is attributed to Antoine Le Nain, a specific attribution that Dickerson and Bell maintain, if tentatively, citing the similarity in the execution of Tréville’s intricate lacework and tightly rendered embroidery to that in other works generally ascribed to Antoine, notably The Musical Reunion (fig. 2 1642; Louvre) and An Interior (1647; Louvre). However, as they acknowledge, the large scale of the painting is atypical of works ascribed to Antoine. Furthermore, the date of the painting indicates that any – or all – of the brothers could have participated in its execution.

PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

42

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JUAN DE ARELLANO (SANTORCAZ 1614-1676 MADRID)

Tulips, roses, carnations, narcissi and other flowers in a glass vase, on a stone ledge; and Tulips, roses, hyacinths and other flowers in a glass vase, on a stone ledge

PROVENANCE:

the first, signed 'Juan de Arellano' (lower right); the second, signed 'Juan de Arellano.' (lower right) oil on canvas the first, 21¬ x 25¡ in. (55 x 64.4 cm.); the second, 21√ x 25¡ in. (55.6 x 64.5 cm.) a pair (2)

Anonymous sale; Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 11 March 1977, lot 87. with Noortman BV, Hulsberg, 1979.

Private collection, The Netherlands. with Noortman (Maastricht) BV, 4 May 1987, where acquired by the present owner.

$250,000-350,000

A.E. Pérez Sánchez, Juan de Arellano: 1614-1676, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 1998, pp. 60-1, figs. 10-11.

£190,000-260,000 €220,000-300,000

LITERATURE:

The painter and biographer Palomino, who was known as the Spanish Vasari, wrote of Arellano that: ‘none of the Spaniards surpassed him in eminence of this skill’ (A. Palomino de Castro y Velasco, Las vidas de los pintores y estatuarios eminentes Españoles, London, 1742, p. 105). These still lifes are fine examples of the work that established Arellano’s reputation as the pre-eminent painter of flower pieces in the Golden Age of Spanish art, displaying several characteristic features of his style, particularly in the use of the primary colors red, yellow and blue. These dominant hues are harmoniously balanced and offset through the chiaroscuro generated from the white highlights and dark background. These pictures can be compared with a pair of almost identical dimensions, both signed in the same extravagant manner, which are now in a private collection in Barcelona. Alfonso Pérez Sanchez considers that pair to have been executed in circa 1665-70 (op. cit., pp. 209-212, nos. 44 & 45), and it would seem reasonable to date the present pictures to this period of Arellano’s oeuvre. The lively sense of movement, bold colors, and Baroque grandeur of these works illustrate the

increasing influence of Mario Nuzzi, called Mario de’ Fiori (1603-1673), and the flower-pieces by the following generation of painters in Madrid, such as Bartolomé Pérez (1634-1693) and Gabriel de la Corte (1648-1694).

Born in Santorcaz, Madrid in 1614, Juan de Arellano entered the studio of Juan de Solis at the age of sixteen where he trained as a figure-painter of modest success. However, by the time he reached his thirties, he had begun to concentrate predominantly on flower-pieces, eventually producing a repertoire of different formats, including vases, baskets and garlands. This genre had been explored by Spanish artists of the previous generation, most notably by Juan van der Hamen y León (1596-1631) and Juan Fernández, called El Labrador (active 1629-1636), who both incorporated flowers into their still life paintings.

However, it was not until the mid-seventeenth century, and in part due to Arellano, that flower-pieces became a specialist field in Spanish art and an integral feature of the decoration of homes and church interiors in Madrid.

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ÉLISABETH-LOUISE VIGÉE LE BRUN (PARIS 1755-1842)

EXHIBITED:

Portrait of a young boy of the Caillot family; and Portrait of Augustine Catherine Caillot pastel, on pink paper, laid on a stretcher (i) 17æ x 14¬ in. (45.3 x 37 cm); (ii) 17Ω x 14¬ in. (44.5 x 36.5 cm)

a pair (2) $500,000-700,000

£380,000-520,000 €430,000-600,000

PROVENANCE:

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), the artist’s husband, from whom acquired by, Charles Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802), Paris and London; his sale, Skinner and Dycke, London, 23 March 1795, lot 62. with Galerie Paraf, Paris, by 1910. with Wildenstein & Gimpel, Paris and New York, where acquired in March 1912 by, Samuel Reading Bertron (1865-1938), New York and Roslyn, Long Island, until circa 1920 when acquired by the following, with Wildenstein & Cie., Paris. with Galerie Heim-Gairac, Paris.

Anonymous sale; Tajan, Paris, 20 December 2000, lot 54, as Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Greuze, where acquired by, Michel Delrue, Geneva, until 2011, from whom acquired by, Private collection.

Paris, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Palais du Domaine de Bagatelle, Les Enfants, leurs portraits, leurs jouets, May 14-July 15, 1910, no. 189, as Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, May 7 November 1, 1920, p. 10, unnumbered, as Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

Paris, Hôtel Jean Charpentier, Exposition de pastels français du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècle, May - June 1927, nos. 19 and 20, as Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

Marly-le-Roi / Louveciennes, Musée-Promenade de Marly-le-Roi, L’Enfant chéri au siècle des Lumières, après l’Émile, July 12 - October 14, 2003, nos. 43 and 44.

Tokyo, Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Créer au féminin—femmes artistes du siècle de Madame Vigée Le Brun, 1 March - 8 May 2011, nos. 65 and 66.

Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 23 September 2015 - 11 January 2016, nos. 89 and 90.

LITERATURE:

É.L. Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs, I, Paris, 1835, p. 334.

'Supplementary List of Loans Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XV, no. 6, June 1920, p. 144, as Jean-Baptiste Greuze. É. Dacier and P. Ratouis de Limay, Pastels français des XVII et XVIIIe siècles, Paris and Brussels, 1927, p. 110, nos. 113 and 114, pl. LXXVIII, as Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

R. Gimpel, Journal d’un collectionneur, marchand de tableaux, Paris, 1963, p. 307; 2nd, revised ed., Paris, 2011, p. 450, as Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

J. Baillio, 'Vigée Le Brun pastelliste et son portrait de la duchesse de Guiche', L’Oeil, June 1993, p. 22, 24-25, figs. 7 and 8.

N. Jaffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, London, 2006, online edition, (http:// pastellists.com/Articles/VigeeLeBrun.pdf), p. 7, nos. J.76.153 and J.76.154, illustrated.

J. Baillo, in, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, exhib. cat., Paris, 2015, pp. 220-221 and 365, nos. 89-90, illustrated. É.L. Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs, I, Paris, 2015, pp. 94-95, illustrated.

The present lot framed.

This refined pair of pastel portraits of a young boy and girl were long considered the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, in part because they share an emotionally expressive sensibility associated with the ‘têtes d’expression’ that were popularized by Greuze, himself an accomplished pastellist. It was only in 1993 that Joseph Baillio, the leading authority on the works of Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, corrected this error and returned these pastels to their true author.

Baillio recognized that in Vigée Le Brun’s own manuscript list of her works, under the year 1787, the artist recorded a portrait of the actor and singer Joseph Caillot in hunting costume (private collection), followed immediately by two portraits of Caillot’s children, which Baillio associated with the present pastels.

Joseph Caillot (1733-1816) was a friend of Vigée Le Brun who had made a great reputation for himself as a singer and comic actor at the ComédieItalienne and later at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, celebrated for the wide range of his musical register, from baritone to tenor. In 1779, Caillot married Marie-Augustine ‘Blanchette' Saÿde, who gave birth the following year in Passy to the couple’s first child, Augustine-Catherine Caillot (1780-1858); their second child, Armand-Charles Caillot (1788-1813) was born eight years later.

In 1785 Blanchette also had an illegitimate son, Théodore-Joseph, who died the following year. As Baillio recognized, there cannot be an eight-year age difference between the two children in Vigée Le Brun’s pastel portraits – and a portrait of Armand-Charles could not have been executed a year before he was born! – and so, while he identifies the present portrait of the girl as of Augustine-Catherine, he regards the portrait of the boy as depicting an unknown and as yet to be identified member of Caillot’s family. The portraits are first securely documented in the collection of Charles-Alexandre de

Calonne (1734-1802), Louis XVI’s powerful Controller-General of Finances in the years leading up to the Revolution; the pair of pastels appears in the auction of Calonne’s properties held in London in 1795, lot 62.

Neil Jeffares fully endorses the attribution of the pastels to Vigée Le Brun and believes them probably to be the pendants in Calonne’s collection, but has raised doubts as to the sitters’ identities (loc. cit.). The scholar has noted that Vigée Le Brun’s manuscript list does not cite the medium of the portraits as pastel and lists them as depicting 'ses [Caillot’s] deux enfants' in 1787, when only one of Caillot’s recorded children – Augustine-Catherine – was alive (but if the reference is to Théodore-Joseph, he could not be the boy in the present work).

Two copies of the pastels, signed by the pastellist Michel Rabillon (1735-1786), one apparently dated 1780, are known (Jeffares, op. cit., p. 7, nos. J.6078.112 and J.6078.113). Jeffares (who continues to index the works under Caillot) cannot exclude the possibility that the present pastels may, instead, be unrecorded portraits, perhaps even of members of Calonne’s own family, possibly his son, Charles-Louis-Henri de Calonne (1770-1808) and his niece, Marie-AnneCharlotte de Valicourt (1774-1835), made by Vigée Le Brun around 1785 or slightly earlier.

Regardless of the sitters’ identities, Vigée Le Brun’s pastels are especially gentle and exquisitely refined examples of her work in the difficult medium of pastel, full of youthful wonder – as Baillio notes – and of the 'air d’ingénuité et d’innocence', that make them among the most beautiful and accomplished of the artist’s career.

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FRANÇOIS BOUCHER (PARIS 1703-1770)

A woman and boy crossing a stream beneath a dovecote signed and dated '·f· Boucher / ·1748·' (lower left, on the stone ledge) oil on canvas 26¿ x 31¬ in. (66.4 x 80.3 cm.) $200,000-300,000

£150,000-220,000 €180,000-260,000

PROVENANCE:

Painted for the actress Marie Justine Benoîte Favart, née Duronceray (1727-1772), Paris.

Jean-Claude Gaspard de Sireul (1713-1781), Paris; his deceased sale, Boileau, Paris, 3 December 1781, lot 23, for 300 livres to Vanel.

Anonymous sale; J.A. Paillet, Paris, 9 December 1783, lot 4.

Louis Gabriel (1722-1785), Marquis de Véri Raionard; his estate sale, Boileau and Paillet, Paris, 12 December 1785, lot 11, for 232 livres to Galland.

Louis Jean François Collet (1722-1787), Paris; his estate sale, J.B.P. Le Brun, Paris, 14 May 1787, lot 297, for 108 livres to Bellot.

Eugène Kraemer (1852-1912), Paris; his estate sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 28 April 1913, lot 3, for 16,500 francs to Féral.

François Coty (1874-1934), Château du Puy d’Artigny, Montbazon, and Pavillon Du Barry, Louveciennes; his estate sale, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Paris, 30 November 1936, lot 19, to M. Bonnemaison. with Wildenstein & Co. Ltd., London, circa 1967, where acquired in January 1974 by, Gerald Humphry Legge (1924-1997), 9th Earl of Dartmouth, Great Britain, and by descent until 2002.

LITERATURE:

A. Michel, François Boucher, Paris, [1906], p. 101, no. 1781.

P. de Nolhac, François Boucher, premier peintre du roi, 1703-1770, Paris, 1907, p. 160.

A. Ananoff, François Boucher, II, Lausanne and Paris, 1976, pp. 11 and opposite 66, no.

317, fig. 909.

A. Ananoff, L’Opera completa di Boucher, Milan, 1980, p. 112, no. 328, plate XXX. M. Hyde, Making Up the Rococo: François Boucher and his critics, Los Angeles, 2006, pp. 49-50 and 74, note 29.

This idyllic pastoral landscape is a luminous example of François Boucher's output at the height of his career. Painted in 1748, it depicts a young peasant woman lifting her skirt to wade through a stream while a boy crouches on the rocks beside her, playfully splashing water at her legs. Above them, a dovecote rises before a stone bridge, with doves flitting about and perched along its exterior. Another woman emerges from the shadowed doorway of a cottage.

The composition uses similar elements to an earlier work by Boucher, The old dovecote, dated before 1747, now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (fig. 1).

The Hamburg picture was published by Alexandre Ananonff in 1976 alongside its pendant (Sotheby's, London, 5 July 2005, lot 14), dated 1739, which together depict views from or near the village of Charenton, just east of Paris where the Seine and Marne rivers merge (op. cit., I, pp. 288-289, nos. 167 and 168).

This landscape was once owned by Jean-Claude Gaspard de Sireul, one of the most important collectors of Boucher's drawings during the artist's lifetime.

His posthumous sale in 1781 comprised more than two hundred drawings and sixteen paintings by Boucher, including the present work. The sale catalogue expressed admiration for this painting, noting that Boucher 'a réuni dans cette composition gracieuse tout ce qui pouvoit contribuer à l'enrichir, & ce Morceau qu'il avoit fait pour Mademoiselle Favart, est une de ses plus brillantes productions' ['has brought together in this graceful composition everything that could contribute to enriching it, and this piece that he had made for Mademoiselle Favart is one of his most brilliant productions'].

The ‘Mademoiselle Favart' mentioned is Marie Justine Benoîte Favart, a celebrated actress, dancer and opera singer of 18th century France. She began her career as 'Madame Duronceray' and in 1745, she married Charles Simon Favart, a playwriter and the director of the Opéra-Comique, where together they became leading figures in shaping operatic taste in Paris. Boucher was well acquainted with the couple, as he has been active as a theater designer in Paris from as early as 1737 and worked on productions at the Opéra-Comique between 1743 and 1754.

It was during these years Boucher produced many of his most refined pastoral scenes, introducing a naivete not seen in such works by his predecessors. At the same time, Favart was transforming the theater with dramas infused with Arcadian themes, which harmonized perfectly with Boucher’s pastoral imagery.

This collaboration placed Boucher at the intersection of visual and performing arts, and his paintings often echo the theatricality of stage scenery—lush landscapes, artfully arranged figures, and dramatic lighting. The present work, with its carefully orchestrated rustic setting and narrative interplay between figures, exemplifies this theatrical sensibility, likely painted with 'Mademoiselle Favart' in mind.

In the early 20th century, the painting was owned by the French perfumer, newspaper publisher and politician François Coty, who had the canvas cleaned.

During this process, certain details—likely 19th-century additions—were removed, including a shepherd and his dog on the bridge. These additions can be seen in the 1913 catalogue of the Eugène Kraemer sale.

Fig. 1 François Boucher, The old dovecote, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, EUROPE

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LUCA CARLEVARIJS (UDINE 1663-1730 VENICE)

Venice, the Piazzetta looking toward the Piazza San Marco oil on canvas 35º x 52º in. (89.5 x 132.7) $400,000-600,000

£300,000-450,000 €350,000-510,000

PROVENANCE:

John Ashburnham (1724-1812), 2nd Earl of Ashburnham, Ashburnham House, Westminster, (as recorded in a notebook begun in 1760 (see infra)) and by descent to, Lady Catherine Ashburnham (1890-1953), Ashburnham Place, Sussex; her deceased sale, Sotheby's, London, 24 June 1953, lot 50.

Private collection, London, by 1963.

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 13 December 2000, lot 98, where acquired by the present owner.

EXHIBITED:

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery; Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, Eighteenth Century Venice, 3 January-14 March 1951; 21 March-18 April 1951, no. 23.

LITERATURE:

F.J. Watson, Eighteenth Century Venice, exhibition catalogue, London, 1951, p. 15, no. 23.

R. Pallucchini, 'La pittura Veneziana del Settecento all' Whitechapel Gallery di Londra', Arte Veneta, 1951, p. 210.

A. Rizzi, Disegni, incisioni, e bozzetti del Carlevarijs, exhibition catalogue, Udine and Rome,1963, pl. XXXVI. A. Rizzi, Luca Carlevarijs, Venice, 1967, p. 90, pl. 141.

C. Beddington, Luca Carlevarijs: Views of Venice, exhibition catalogue, San Diego, 2001, pp. 26-27, fig. 26.

The British diplomat, Consul at Venice, archaeologist, and art collector John Strange described Luca Carlevarijs as ‘the first [artist] of any note who painted views of Venice’ in the catalogue for the sale of his own collection at Christie’s on 10 December 1789. Indeed, Carlevarijs is rightly regarded as the first of the great Venetian vedutisti of the eighteenth century, and his success in securing a sustained clientele for views of Venice in the early decades of the Settecento set the pattern for the careers of Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, Michele Marieschi and Francesco Guardi later in the century.

Carlevarijs understood well that the sights most likely to appeal to visitors to the city—his prospective patrons—were those associated with the parade of Venetian life, and the Piazzetta, at the very hub of the city, was one of his key subjects. Here, the Piazzetta is seen from the Bacino, its monumental columns with sculptures of Venice’s patron Saint Tòdaro and the winged lion of Saint Mark anchoring the composition. At right, visitors crowd before a puppet show outside the Gothic colonnade of the Palazzo Ducale. The soaring domes and southern façade of the Basilica di San Marco and the Torre dell’Orologio are visible at the far end of the square.

Carlevarijs painted nearly the same view on several occasions, including a slightly wider panorama with differences in the staffage (Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, inv. no. 1979:004) and a canvas formerly in the Fano collection, Milan, which extends the view even further to include the gondolas in the Bacino (A. Rizzi, 1967, op. cit., figs. 51-53). Two highly similar canvases in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (ibid., figs. 137-138) and a New York private collection (ibid., fig. 139) also utilize the steps to the Bacino to define the space in the foreground. The Los Angeles picture is taken from a viewpoint somewhat to the left, while the New York view from one slightly to the right, so that the Torre dell' Orologio is partly obscured by the column.

Although topographical accuracy was Carlevarijs' primary concern, he recognized the importance of lively and varied figures in conveying the character of Venetian life. He made numerous studies on paper and in oil of individual figures and groups, which provided inspiration for the crowds that populate his paintings. The man holding two baskets at far right is related to a group of unusually highly finished pen-and-ink studies in the Salamon Collection, Milan (fig. 1). That drawing, along with five others, includes identifying inscriptions in Carlevarijs’ hand and depicts the occupations and typical dress of everyday Venetians. These studies may have been conceived for a never-realized set of prints (see I. Reale and D. Succi, Luca Carlevarijs e la veduta del Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Padua, 1994, p. 293).

The first recorded owner of this painting, John Ashburnham (1724-1812), 2nd Earl of Ashburnham, succeeded his father at the age of thirteen in 1737. He made his Grand Tour in 1745 with his tutor, Edward Clarke, and is known to have attended a banquet given there by Lord Holderness, the British ambassador, in February of that year. Charles Beddington has dated this painting to the 1720s, noting that it could have been acquired by Ashburnham during his travels (loc. cit.).

Fig. 1 Luca Carlevarijs, Six Sketches, Collezione Salamon, Milan.

The Ashburnham family accumulated what was, by any standards, a remarkable collection, and the 2nd Earl was a collector on a very considerable scale.

For example, he purchased the entire collection of Humphry Morice—which included a Canaletto secured by his uncle, Sir William Morice, on or after a tour of 1729-30—after his death in 1785. Two notebooks, begun respectively in 1760 and 1793, record the development of Ashburnham's collection and establish that he was an active purchaser in the London salerooms from 1754. This painting is listed in the 1760 notebook, which covers purchases between 1754 and 1786, suggesting that the painting was acquired after his return to England in 1746.

MICHELANGELO

A newly discovered study for the Sistine Chapel ceiling to be sold in the Old Master and British Drawings Sale 5 February 2026

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI (CAPRESE 1475-1564 ROME)

This powerful drawing by Michelangelo is a recent discovery. Of the few drawings by the artist still in private hands, this is the only one connected to the Sistine Chapel ceiling to come to auction.

with ink inscription 'Michel Angelo Buana Roti' (lower left) red chalk (recto); black chalk (verso) 5º x 4¬ in. (13.5 x 11.5 cm)

Michelangelo attained unprecedented fame. Courted by potentates and kings and employed by successive popes, he was known by the 1520s as il divino (the divine one). His long and prolific career produced sculptural, architectural, and pictorial projects remarkable for their ambition and scale, revealing his exceptional creativity and vision. His surviving drawings, along with more than five hundred letters, private papers and ricordi, offer valuable insight into his personality, beliefs, and ambitions.

Study for a foot of the Libyan Sibyl (recto); Study of a leg with knee bent (verso)

$1,500,000-2,000,000

£1,200,000-1,500,000 €1,300,000-1,700,000

PROVENANCE:

Possibly Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566), Rome; possibly by inheritance to Michele degli Alberti (documented 1535-1568), Rome (possibly the Bona Roti Collector).

Armand François Louis de Mestral de Saint-Saphorin (1738-1805), Switzerland; by inheritance to his nephew Armand Louis Henri de Mestral (1772-1854), Switzerland; by descent to Armand Gabriel Eugène Henri de Mestral (1815-1873), Switzerland; by descent to Victor Georges Alexis Armand de Mestral (1854-1937), Switzerland; by descent to Gérard Armand de Mestral (1883-1964), Switzerland; by descent to Hélène Liliane de Mestral von Steiger (1916-2011), Bern, Switzerland; by descent to the present owner.

Between 1500 and 1520, Michelangelo was in his physical and artistic prime, dividing his time between Florence and Rome, undertaking major commissions such as the David, the Battle of Cascina cartoon, the Tomb of Pope Julius II, the façade of San Lorenzo in Florence, and the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome.

Summoned by Julius II in 1508, Michelangelo conceived an ambitious program for the Sistine vault comprising an illusionistic architectural framework with nine compartments depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis, ignudi (male nudes) seated on plinths and, below these, seven monumental Prophets alternating with five Sibyls, each seated on a throne. Painted in two campaigns (1508–1512), the ceiling was unveiled on October 31, 1512. Giorgio Vasari, one of the artist’s early biographers, hailed it as ‘a veritable beacon for our art, of inestimable benefit to all painters, restoring light to a world that for centuries had been plunged into darkness’.

This sheet belongs to an important group of red-chalk figure studies that Michelangelo made from live models in preparation for the frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Dating to around 1511, these drawings are widely considered Michelangelo’s finest achievements in the medium. This study – unknown until now – is preparatory for the right foot of the monumental Libyan Sibyl (fig. 1) and shows Michelangelo’s enduring commitment to the careful representation of the human body. He drew the foot with power and precision, studying the visual effects of the toes pressing on the ground. The vigorous outlines accentuate the contours of the form, anticipating the way the foot will be clearly delineated in the fresco which was to be viewed from a considerable distance. Standing in front of this sheet, one can grasp the full power of Michelangelo’s creative force; we can almost feel the physical energy with which he rendered the form of the foot, firmly pressing the red chalk onto the paper.

The pen and ink annotation on the sheet at lower left recording the artist’s name offers an important clue to the drawing’s early history. Similar inscriptions—attributed by Paul Joannides to the so-called ‘Bona Roti Collector’, quite plausibly identified with Michele degli Alberti, a pupil of Daniele da Volterra, one of Michelangelo’s devoted collaborators and friends—appear on many Michelangelo sheets, including anatomical studies and works for the Sistine ceiling. By the eighteenth century the present sheet had entered the collection of Armand François Louis de Mestral de Saint-Saphorin (1738–1806), a Swiss diplomat in the service of the King of Denmark, and has remained with his descendants.

This drawing has never appeared on the market and is unpublished. For centuries, the sheet has remained in private hands, unrecorded and unknown to scholars. Since it came to light earlier this year, and following several months of research at Christie’s, leading experts on Michelangelo have unanimously recognized the artist as the author of this sheet. Its appearance at auction today presents an exceptionally rare opportunity to acquire a study for Michelangelo’s most celebrated commission, a testament to his status as il divino and his enduring reputation as one of the great geniuses of the Renaissance.

Fig. 1. Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Libyan Sibyl. Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.

actual size

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(a) Coloured gemstones (such as rubies, sapphires and emeralds) may have been treated to improve their look, through methods such as heating and oiling. These methods are accepted by the international jewellery trade but may make the gemstone less strong and/or require special care over time. (b) It will not be apparent to us whether a diamond is naturally or synthetically formed unless it has been tested by a gemmological laboratory. Where the diamond has been tested, a gemmological report will be available. (c) All types of gemstones may have been improved by some method. You may request a gemmological report for any item which does not have a report if the request is made to us at least three weeks before the date of the auction and you pay the fee for the report. (d) Certain weights in the catalogue description are provided for guidance purposes only as they have been estimated through measurement and, as such, should not be relied upon as exact. (e) We do not obtain a gemmological report for every gemstone sold in our auctions. Where we do get gemmological reports from internationally accepted gemmological laboratories, such reports will be described in the catalogue. Reports from American gemmological laboratories will describe any improvement or treatment to the gemstone. Reports from European gemmological laboratories will describe any improvement or treatment only if we request that they do so, but will confirm when no improvement or treatment has been made. Because of differences in approach and technology, laboratories may not agree whether a particular gemstone has been treated, the amount of treatment, or whether treatment is permanent. The gemmological laboratories will only report on the improvements or treatments known to the laboratories at the date of the report. We do not guarantee nor are we responsible for any report or certificate from a gemmological laboratory that may accompany a lot. (f) For jewellery sales, estimates are based on the information in any gemmological report, or if no report is available, assume that the gemstones may have been treated or enhanced.

8 WATCHES & CLOCKS

(a) Almost all clocks and watches are repaired in their lifetime and may include parts which are not original. We do not give a warranty that any individual component part of any watch is authentic. Watchbands described as “associated” are not part of the original watch and may not be authentic. Clocks may be sold without pendulums, weights or keys. (b) As collectors’ watches often have very fine and complex mechanisms, you are responsible for any general service, change of battery, or further repair work that may be necessary. We do not give a warranty that any watch is in good working order. Certificates are not available unless described in the catalogue. (c) Most wristwatches have been opened to find out the type and quality of movement. For that reason, wristwatches with water resistant cases may not be waterproof and we recommend you have them checked by a competent watchmaker before use.

Important information about the sale, transport and shipping of watches and watchbands can be found in paragraph H2(f).

B REGISTERING TO BID 1 NEW BIDDERS

(a) If this is your first time bidding at Christie’s or you are a returning bidder who has not bought anything from any of our salerooms within the last two years you must register at least 48 hours before an auction begins to give us enough time to process and approve your registration. We may, at our option, decline to permit you to register as a bidder. You will be asked for the following: (i) for individuals: Photo identification (driver’s licence, national identity card, or passport) and, if not shown on the ID document, proof of your current address (for example, a current utility bill or bank statement); (ii) for corporate clients: Your Certificate of Incorporation or equivalent document(s) showing your name and registered address together with documentary proof of directors and beneficial owners; and (iii) for trusts, partnerships, offshore companies and other business structures, please contact us in advance to discuss our requirements. (b) We may also ask you to give us a financial reference and/or a deposit as a condition of allowing you to bid. For help, please contact our Client Services Department at +1 212-636-2000.

2 RETURNING BIDDERS

As described in paragraph B(1) above, we may at our option ask you for current identification, a financial reference, or a deposit as a condition of allowing you to bid. If you have not bought anything from any of our salerooms within the last two years or if you want to spend more than on previous occasions, please contact our Client Services Department at +1 212-636-2000.

3 IF YOU FAIL TO PROVIDE THE RIGHT DOCUMENTS

If in our opinion you do not satisfy our bidder identification and registration procedures including, but not limited to completing any anti-money laundering and/or anti-terrorism financing checks we may require to our satisfaction, we may refuse to register you to bid, and if you make a successful bid, we may cancel the contract for sale between you and the seller.

4 BIDDING ON BEHALF OF ANOTHER PERSON

If you are bidding on behalf of another person, that person will need to complete the registration requirements above before you can bid and supply a signed letter authorising you to bid for him/ her. A bidder accepts personal liability to pay the purchase price and all other sums due unless it has been agreed in writing with Christie’s, before commencement of the auction, that the bidder is acting as an agent on behalf of a named third party acceptable to Christie’s and that Christie’s will only seek payment from the named third party.

5 BIDDING IN PERSON

If you wish to bid in the saleroom you must register for a numbered bidding paddle at least 30 minutes before the auction.

You may register online at www.christies.com or in person.

For help, please contact the Client Service Department on +1 212-636-2000.

6 BIDDING SERVICES

The bidding services described below are a free service offered as a convenience to our clients and Christie’s is not responsible for any error (human or otherwise), omission, or breakdown in providing these services. (a) Phone Bids Your request for this service must be made no later than 24 hours prior to the auction. We will accept bids by telephone for lots only if our staff are available to take the bids. If you need to bid in a language other than in English, you must arrange this well before the auction. We may record telephone bids. By bidding on the telephone, you are agreeing to us recording your conversations. You also agree that your telephone bids are governed by these Conditions of Sale. (b) Internet Bids on Christie’s LIVE™ For certain auctions we will accept bids over the Internet. For more information, please visit https://www.christies.com/ buying-services/buying-guide/register-and-bid/. As well as these Conditions of Sale, internet bids are governed by the Christie’s LIVE™ Terms of Use which are available at https:// www.christies.com/LiveBidding/OnlineTermsOfUse.aspx. (c) Written Bids You can find a Written Bid Form at any Christie’s office, or by choosing the sale and viewing the lots online at www. christies.com. We must receive your completed Written Bid at least 24 hours before the auction. Bids must be placed in the currency of the saleroom. The auctioneer will take reasonable steps to carry out written bids at the lowest possible price, taking into account the reserve. If you make a written bid on a lot which does not have a reserve and there is no higher bid than yours, we will bid on your behalf at around 50% of the low estimate or, if lower, the amount of your bid. If we receive written bids on a lot for identical amounts, and at the auction these are the highest bids on the lot, we will sell the lot to the bidder whose written bid we received first.

C CONDUCTING THE SALE 1 WHO CAN ENTER THE AUCTION

We may, at our option, refuse admission to our premises or decline to permit participation in any auction or to reject any bid.

2 RESERVES

Unless otherwise indicated, all lots are subject to a reserve. We identify lots that are offered without a reserve with the symbol • next to the lot number. The reserve cannot be more than the lot’s low estimate, unless the lot is subject to a third party guarantee and the irrevocable bid exceeds the printed low estimate. In that case, the reserve will be set at the amount of the irrevocable bid.

Lots which are subject to a third party guarantee arrangement are identified in the catalogue with the symbol °◆.

3 AUCTIONEER’S DISCRETION

The auctioneer can at their sole option: (a) refuse any bid; (b) move the bidding backwards or forwards in any way they may decide, or change the order of the lots; (c) withdraw any lot; (d) divide any lot or combine any two or more lots; (e) reopen or continue the bidding even after the hammer has fallen; and (f) in the case of error or dispute related to bidding and whether during or after the auction, continue the bidding, determine the successful bidder, cancel the sale of the lot, or reoffer and resell any lot. If you believe that the auctioneer has accepted the successful bid in error, you must provide a written notice detailing your claim within 3 business days of the date of the auction. The auctioneer will consider such claim in good faith.

If the auctioneer, in the exercise of their discretion under this paragraph, decides after the auction is complete, to cancel the sale of a lot, or reoffer and resell a lot, they will notify the successful bidder no later than by the end of the 7th calendar day following the date of the auction. The auctioneer’s decision in exercise of this discretion is final. This paragraph does not in any way prejudice Christie’s ability to cancel the sale of a lot under any other applicable provision of these Conditions of Sale, including the rights of cancellation set forth in paragraphs B(3), E(2)(i), F(4), and J(1).

4 BIDDING

The auctioneer accepts bids from: (a) bidders in the saleroom; (b) telephone bidders; (c) internet bidders through Christie’s LIVE™ (as shown above in paragraph B6); and (d) written bids (also known as absentee bids or commission bids) left with us by a bidder before the auction.

5 BIDDING ON BEHALF OF THE SELLER

The auctioneer may, at their sole option, bid on behalf of the seller, including where the seller is the auctioneer, up to but not including the amount of the reserve either by making consecutive bids or by making bids in response to other bidders.

The auctioneer will not identify these as bids made on behalf of the seller and will not make any bid on behalf of the seller at or above the reserve. If lots are offered without reserve, the auctioneer will generally decide to open the bidding at 50% of the low estimate for the lot. If no bid is made at that level, the auctioneer may decide to go backwards at their sole option until a bid is made, and then continue up from that amount. In the event that there are no bids on a lot, the auctioneer may deem such lot unsold.

6 BID INCREMENTS

Bidding generally starts below the low estimate and increases in steps (bid increments). The auctioneer will decide at their sole option where the bidding should start and the bid increments.

7 CURRENCY CONVERTER

The saleroom video screens (and Christies LIVE™) may show bids in some other major currencies as well as US dollars. Any conversion is for guidance only and we cannot be bound by any rate of exchange used. Christie’s is not responsible for any error (human or otherwise), omission or breakdown in providing these services.

8 SUCCESSFUL BIDS

Unless the auctioneer decides to use their discretion as set out in paragraph C3 above, when the auctioneer’s hammer strikes, we have accepted the last bid. This means a contract for sale has been formed between the seller and the successful bidder. We will issue an invoice only to the registered bidder who made the successful bid. While we send out invoices by mail and/or email after the auction, we do not accept responsibility for telling you whether or not your bid was successful. If you have bid by written bid, you should contact us by telephone or in person as soon as possible after the auction to get details of the outcome of your bid to avoid having to pay unnecessary storage charges.

9 LOCAL BIDDING LAWS

You agree that when bidding in any of our sales that you will strictly comply with all local laws and regulations in force at the time of the sale for the relevant sale site.

D THE BUYER’S PREMIUM AND TAXES 1 THE BUYER’S PREMIUM

In addition to the hammer price, the successful bidder agrees to pay us a buyer’s premium on the hammer price of each lot sold. On all lots we charge 27% of the hammer price up to and including US$1,500,000, 22.0% on that part of the hammer price over US$1,500,000 and up to and including US$8,000,000, and 15.0% of that part of the hammer price above US$8,000,000.

2 TAXES

The successful bidder is responsible for any applicable taxes including any sales or use tax or equivalent tax wherever such taxes may arise on the hammer price, the buyer’s premium, and/ or any other charges related to the lot.

For lots Christie’s ships to or within the United States, a sales or use tax may be due on the hammer price, buyer’s premium, and/or any other charges related to the lot, regardless of the nationality or citizenship of the successful bidder. Christie’s will collect sales tax where legally required. The applicable sales tax rate will be determined based upon the state, county, or locale to which the lot will be shipped. Christie’s shall collect New York sales tax at a rate of 8.875% for any lot collected from Christie’s in New York.

In accordance with New York law, if Christie’s arranges the shipment of a lot out of New York State, New York sales tax does not apply, although sales tax or other applicable taxes for other states may apply. If you hire a shipper (other than a common carrier authorized by Christie’s), to collect the lot from a Christie’s New York location, Christie’s must collect New York sales tax on the lot at a rate of 8.875% regardless of the ultimate destination of the lot.

If Christie’s delivers the lot to, or the lot is collected by, any framer, restorer or other similar service provider in New York that you have hired, New York law considers the lot delivered to the successful bidder in New York and New York sales tax must be imposed regardless of the ultimate destination of the lot. In this circumstance, New York sales tax will apply to the lot even if Christie’s or a common carrier (authorized by Christie’s that you hire) subsequently delivers the lot outside New York.

Successful bidders claiming an exemption from sales tax must provide appropriate documentation to Christie’s prior to the release of the lot or within 90 days after the sale, whichever is earlier. For shipments to those states for which Christie’s is not required to collect sales tax, a successful bidder may have a use or similar tax obligation. It is the successful bidder’s responsibility to pay all taxes due. Christie’s recommends you consult your own independent tax advisor with any questions.

E WARRANTIES 1 SELLER’S WARRANTIES

For each lot, the seller gives a warranty that the seller: (a) is the owner of the lot or a joint owner of the lot acting with the permission of the other co-owners or, if the seller is not the owner or a joint owner of the lot, has the permission of the owner to sell the lot, or the right to do so in law; and (b) has the right to transfer ownership of the lot to the buyer without any restrictions or claims by anyone else. (c) If either of the above warranties are incorrect, the seller shall not have to pay more than the purchase price (as defined in paragraph F1(a) below) paid by you to us. The seller will not be responsible to you for any reason for loss of profits or business, expected savings, loss of opportunity or interest, costs, damages, other damages or expenses. The seller gives no warranty in relation to any lot other than as set out above and, as far as the seller is allowed by law, all warranties from the seller to you, and all other obligations upon the seller which may be added to this agreement by law, are excluded.

2 OUR AUTHENTICITY WARRANTY

We warrant, subject to the terms below, that the lots in our sales are authentic (our “authenticity warranty”). If, within 5 years of the date of the auction, you give notice to us that your lot is not authentic, subject to the terms below, we will refund the purchase price paid by you. The meaning of authentic can be found in the glossary at the end of these Conditions of Sale. The terms of the authenticity warranty are as follows: (a) It will be honored for claims notified within a period of 5 years from the date of the auction. After such time, we will not be obligated to honor the authenticity warranty. (b) It is given only for information shown in UPPERCASE type in the first line of the catalogue description (the “Heading”). It does not apply to any information other than in the Heading even if shown in UPPERCASE type. (c) The authenticity warranty does not apply to any Heading or part of a Heading which is qualified. Qualified means limited by a clarification in a lot’s catalogue description or by the use in a Heading of one of the terms listed in the section titled Qualified Headings on the page of the catalogue headed “Important Notices and Explanation of Cataloguing Practice”.

For example, use of the term “ATTRIBUTED TO…” in a Heading means that the lot is in Christie’s opinion probably a work by the named artist but no warranty is provided that the lot is the work of the named artist. Please read the full list of Qualified Headings and a lot’s full catalogue description before bidding. (d) The authenticity warranty applies to the Heading as amended by any Saleroom notice.

(e) The authenticity warranty does not apply where scholarship has developed since the auction leading to a change in generally accepted opinion. Further, it does not apply if the Heading either matched the generally accepted opinion of experts at the date of the auction or drew attention to any conflict of opinion. (f) The authenticity warranty does not apply if the lot can only be shown not to be authentic by a scientific process which, on the date we published the catalogue, was not available or generally accepted for use, or which was unreasonably expensive or impractical, or which was likely to have damaged the lot. (g) The benefit of the authenticity warranty is only available to the original buyer shown on the invoice for the lot issued at the time of the sale and only if on the date of the notice of claim, the original buyer is the full owner of the lot and the lot is free from any claim, interest or restriction by anyone else. The benefit of this authenticity warranty may not be transferred to anyone else. (h) In order to claim under the authenticity warranty you must: (i) give us written notice of your claim within 5 years of the date of the auction. We may require full details and supporting evidence of any such claim; (ii) at Christie’s option, we may require you to provide the written opinions of two recognised experts in the field of the lot mutually agreed by you and us in advance confirming that the lot is not authentic. If we have any doubts, we reserve the right to obtain additional opinions at our expense; and (iii) return the lot at your expense to the saleroom from which you bought it in the condition it was in at the time of sale. (i) Your only right under this authenticity warranty is to cancel the sale and receive a refund of the purchase price paid by you to us. We will not, under any circumstances, be required to pay you more than the purchase price nor will we be liable for any loss of profits or business, loss of opportunity or value, expected savings or interest, costs, damages, other damages or expenses. (j) Books. Where the lot is a book, we give an additional warranty for 21 days from the date of the auction that if any lot is defective in text or illustration, we will refund your purchase price, subject to the following terms: (a) This additional warranty does not apply to: (i) the absence of blanks, half titles, tissue guards or advertisements, damage in respect of bindings, stains, spotting, marginal tears or other defects not affecting completeness of the text or illustration; (ii) drawings, autographs, letters or manuscripts, signed photographs, music, atlases, maps or periodicals; (iii) books not identified by title; (iv) lots sold without a printed estimate; (v) books which are described in the catalogue as sold not subject to return; or (vi) defects stated in any condition report or announced at the time of sale. (b) To make a claim under this paragraph you must give written details of the defect and return the lot to the sale room at which you bought it in the same condition as at the time of sale, within 21 days of the date of the sale. (k) South East Asian Modern and Contemporary Art and Chinese Calligraphy and Painting.

In these categories, the authenticity warranty does not apply because current scholarship does not permit the making of definitive statements. Christie’s does, however, agree to cancel a sale in either of these two categories of art where it has been proven the lot is a forgery. Christie’s will refund to the original buyer the purchase price in accordance with the terms of Christie’s Authenticity warranty, provided that the original buyer notifies us with full supporting evidence documenting the forgery claim within twelve (12) months of the date of the auction. Such evidence must be satisfactory to us that the property is a forgery in accordance with paragraph E2(h)(ii) above and the property must be returned to us in accordance with paragraph E2(h)(iii) above. Paragraphs E2(b), (c), (d), (e), (f) and (g) and (i) also apply to a claim under these categories. (l) Chinese, Japanese and Korean artefacts (excluding Chinese, Japanese and Korean calligraphy, paintings, prints, drawings and jewellery).

In these categories, paragraph E2 (b) – (e) above shall be amended so that where no maker or artist is identified, the authenticity warranty is given not only for the Heading but also for information regarding date or period shown in UPPERCASE type in the second line of the catalogue description (the “Subheading”). Accordingly, all references to the Heading in paragraph E2 (b) – (e) above shall be read as references to both the Heading and the Subheading.

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3 NO IMPLIED WARRANTIES EXCEPT AS SET FORTH IN PARAGRAPHS E1 AND E2 ABOVE, NEITHER THE SELLER NOR THE CHRISTIE’S GROUP MAKE ANY OTHER WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ORAL OR WRITTEN, WITH RESPECT TO THE LOT, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, EACH OF WHICH IS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMED.

4 YOUR WARRANTIES

(d) You must quote the sale number, your invoice number and client number when making a payment. All payments sent by post must be sent to: Christie’s Inc. Post-Sale Services, 20 Rockefeller Center, New York, NY 10020. (e) For more information please contact our Post-Sale Services by phone at +1 212 636 2650 or fax at +1 212 636 4939 or email PostSaleUS@christies.com.

(a) You warrant that the funds used for settlement are not connected with any criminal activity, including tax evasion, and you are neither under investigation, nor have you been charged with or convicted of money laundering, terrorist activities or other crimes.

2 TRANSFERRING OWNERSHIP TO YOU

(b) Where you are bidding on behalf of another person, you warrant that:

3 TRANSFERRING RISK TO YOU

(i) you have conducted appropriate customer due diligence on the ultimate buyer(s) of the lot(s) in accordance with all applicable anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, consent to us relying on this due diligence, and you will retain for a period of not less than 5 years the documentation evidencing the due diligence. You will make such documentation promptly available for immediate inspection by an independent third-party auditor upon our written request to do so; (ii) the arrangements between you and the ultimate buyer(s) in relation to the lot or otherwise do not, in whole or in part, facilitate tax crimes; (iii) you do not know, and have no reason to suspect, that the funds used for settlement are connected with, the proceeds of any criminal activity, including tax evasion, or that the ultimate buyer(s) are under investigation, or have been charged with or convicted of money laundering, terrorist activities or other crimes.

F PAYMENT 1 HOW TO PAY (a) Immediately following the auction, you must pay the purchase price being: (i) the hammer price; and (ii) the buyer’s premium; and (iii) any applicable duties, goods, sales, use, compensating or service tax, or VAT. Payment is due no later than by the end of the 7th calendar day following the date of the auction (the “due date”). (b) We will only accept payment from the registered bidder. Once issued, we cannot change the buyer’s name on an invoice or re-issue the invoice in a different name. You must pay immediately even if you want to export the lot and you need an export licence. (c) You must pay for lots bought at Christie’s in the United States in the currency stated on the invoice in one of the following ways: (i) Wire transfer JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., 270 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017; ABA# 021000021; FBO: Christie’s Inc.; Account # 957-107978, for international transfers, SWIFT: CHASUS33. (ii) Credit Card We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and China Union Pay. Credit card payments at the New York premises will only be accepted for New York sales. Christie’s will not accept credit card payments for purchases in any other sale site. (iii) Cash We accept cash payments (including money orders and traveller’s checks) for sales in New York, subject to a maximum aggregate limit of US$500 per buyer per year. (iv) Bank Checks You must make these payable to Christie’s Inc. and there may be conditions. Once we have deposited your check, property cannot be released until five business days have passed. (v) Checks You must make checks payable to Christie’s Inc. and they must be drawn from US dollar accounts from a US bank. (vi) Cryptocurrency With the exception of clients resident in Mainland China, payment for a lot marked with the symbol ❖ may be made in a cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies of our choosing. Such cryptocurrency payments must be made in accordance with the Additional Conditions of Sale - Nonfungible Tokens set out at Appendix A to these Conditions of Sale.

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You will not own the lot and ownership of the lot will not pass to you until we have received full and clear payment of the purchase price, even in circumstances where we have released the lot to you.

The risk in and responsibility for the lot will transfer to you from whichever is the earlier of the following: (a) When you collect the lot; or (b) At the end of the 30th day following the date of the auction or, if earlier, the date the lot is taken into care by a third party warehouse as set out on the page headed ‘Storage and Collection’, unless we have agreed otherwise with you.

4 WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO NOT PAY (a) If you fail to pay us the purchase price in full by the due date, we will be entitled to do one or more of the following (as well as enforce our rights under paragraph F5 and any other rights or remedies we have by law): (i) we can charge interest from the due date at a rate of up to 1.34% per month on the unpaid amount due; (ii) we can cancel the sale of the lot. If we do this, we may sell the lot again, publicly or privately on such terms we shall think necessary or appropriate, in which case you must pay us any shortfall between the purchase price and the proceeds from the resale. You must also pay all costs, expenses, losses, damages and legal fees we have to pay or may suffer and any shortfall in the seller’s commission on the resale; (iii) we can pay the seller an amount up to the net proceeds payable in respect of the amount bid by your default in which case you acknowledge and understand that Christie’s will have all of the rights of the seller to pursue you for such amounts; (iv) we can hold you legally responsible for the purchase price and may begin legal proceedings to recover it together with other losses, interest, legal fees and costs as far as we are allowed by law; (v) we can take what you owe us from any amounts which we or any company in the Christie’s Group may owe you (including any deposit or other part-payment which you have paid to us); (vi) we can, at our option, reveal your identity and contact details to the seller; (vii) we can reject at any future auction any bids made by or on behalf of the buyer or to obtain a deposit from the buyer before accepting any bids; (viii) we can exercise all the rights and remedies of a person holding security over any property in our possession owned by you, whether by way of pledge, security interest or in any other way as permitted by the law of the place where such property is located. You will be deemed to have granted such security to us and we may retain such property as collateral security for your obligations to us; and (ix) we can take any other action we see necessary or appropriate. (b) If you owe money to us or to another Christie’s Group company, we can use any amount you do pay, including any deposit or other part-payment you have made to us, or which we owe you, to pay off any amount you owe to us or another Christie’s Group company for any transaction.

5 KEEPING YOUR PROPERTY If you owe money to us or to another Christie’s Group company, as well as the rights set out in F4 above, we can use or deal with any of your property we hold or which is held by another Christie’s Group company in any way we are allowed to by law.

We will only release your property to you after you pay us or the relevant Christie’s Group company in full for what you owe.

However, if we choose, we can also sell your property in any way we think appropriate. We will use the proceeds of the sale against any amounts you owe us and we will pay any amount left from that sale to you. If there is a shortfall, you must pay us any difference between the amount we have received from the sale and the amount you owe us.

G COLLECTION AND STORAGE

(a) You must collect purchased lots within seven days from the auction (but note that lots will not be released to you until you have made full and clear payment of all amounts due to us). (b) If you do not collect any lot within 90 days following the auction we may, at our option (i) charge you storage costs at the rates set out at www. christies.com/en/help/buying-guide/storage-fees. (ii) move the lot to another Christie’s location or an affiliate or third-party warehouse and charge you transport costs and administration fees for doing so and you will be subject to the third party storage warehouse’s standard terms and to pay for their standard fees and costs. (iii) sell the lot in any commercially reasonable way we think appropriate. (c) The Storage conditions which can be found at www.christies. com/en/help/buying-guide/storage-conditions will apply. (d) If you do not collect the lot within 90 calendar days of the auction and Christie’s exercises its rights under paragraph G(b) above, the lot will be deemed delivered in New York and therefore subject to New York state and local sales tax.

For shipments booked and paid for prior to 90 calendar days of the auction, sales tax will be determined based on the guidance set forth in paragraph D(2). (e) Nothing in this paragraph is intended to limit our rights under paragraph F4.

H TRANSPORT AND SHIPPING 1 SHIPPING

We would be happy to assist in making shipping arrangements on request. You must make all transport and shipping arrangements.

However, we can arrange to pack, transport, and ship your property if you ask us to and pay the costs of doing so. We recommend that you ask us for an estimate, especially for any large items or items of high value that need professional packing.

We may also suggest other handlers, packers, transporters, or experts if you ask us to do so. For more information, please contact Christie’s Post-Sale Services at +1 212 636 2650. See the information set out at https://www.christies.com/buyingservices/buying-guide/ship/ or contact us at PostSaleUS@ christies.com. We will take reasonable care when we are handling, packing, transporting, and shipping. However, if we recommend another company for any of these purposes, we are not responsible for their acts, failure to act, or neglect.

2 EXPORT AND IMPORT

Any lot sold at auction may be affected by laws on exports from the country in which it is sold and the import restrictions of other countries. Many countries require a declaration of export for property leaving the country and/or an import declaration on entry of property into the country. Local laws may prevent you from importing a lot or may prevent you selling a lot in the country you import it into. (a) You alone are responsible for getting advice about and meeting the requirements of any laws or regulations which apply to exporting or importing any lot prior to bidding. If you are refused a licence or there is a delay in getting one, you must still pay us in full for the lot. We may be able to help you apply for the appropriate licences if you ask us to and pay our fee for doing so. However, we cannot guarantee that you will get one. For more information, please contact Christie’s Post-Sale Services Department at +1 212 636 2650 and PostSaleUS@christies.com.

See the information set out at https://www.christies. com/buying-services/buying-guide/ship/ or contact us at PostSaleUS@christies.com. (b) You alone are responsible for any applicable taxes, tariffs or other government-imposed charges relating to the export or import of the lot. If Christie’s exports or imports the lot on your behalf, and if Christie’s pays these applicable taxes, tariffs or other government-imposed charges, you agree to refund that amount to Christie’s. (c) Endangered and protected species Lots made of or including (regardless of the percentage) endangered and other protected species of wildlife are marked with the symbol ~ in the catalogue. This material includes, among other things, ivory, tortoiseshell, whalebone, certain species of coral, Brazilian rosewood, crocodile, alligator and ostrich skins. You should check the relevant customs laws and regulations before bidding on any lot containing wildlife material if you plan to export the lot from the country in which the lot is sold and import it into another country as a licence may be required. In some cases, the lot can only be shipped with an independent scientific confirmation of species and/or age and you will need to obtain these at your own cost. Several countries have imposed restrictions on dealing in elephant ivory, ranging from a total ban on importing African elephant ivory in the United States to importing, exporting and selling under strict measures in other countries. Handbags containing endangered or

protected species material are marked with the symbol ≈ and further information can be found in paragraph H2(h) below.

We will not be obliged to cancel your purchase and refund the purchase price if your lot may not be exported, imported or it is seized for any reason by a government authority. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations relating to the export or import of property containing such protected or regulated material. (d) Lots containing Ivory or materials resembling ivory If a lot contains elephant ivory, or any other wildlife material that could be confused with elephant ivory (for example, mammoth ivory, walrus ivory, helmeted hornbill ivory) you may be prevented from exporting the lot from the US or shipping it between US States without first confirming its species by way of a rigorous scientific test acceptable to the applicable Fish and Wildlife authorities. You will buy that lot at your own risk and be responsible for any scientific test or other reports required for export from the USA or between US States at your own cost. We will not be obliged to cancel your purchase and refund the purchase price if your lot may not be exported, imported or shipped between US States, or it is seized for any reason by a government authority. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy the requirements of any applicable laws or regulations relating to interstate shipping, export or import of property containing such protected or regulated material. (e) Lots of Iranian origin Some countries prohibit or restrict the purchase, export and/or import of Iranian-origin “works of conventional craftsmanship” (works that are not by a recognized artist and/ or that have a function, (for example: carpets, bowls, ewers, tiles, ornamental boxes). For example, the USA prohibits the import and export of this type of property without a license issued by the US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control. Other countries, such as Canada, only permit the import of this property in certain circumstances.

As a convenience to buyers, Christie’s indicates under the title of a lot if the lot originates from Iran (Persia). It is your responsibility to ensure you do not bid on or import a lot in contravention of the sanctions or trade embargoes that apply to you. (f) Gold Gold of less than 18ct does not qualify in all countries as ‘gold’ and may be refused import into those countries as ‘gold’. (g) Watches Many of the watches offered for sale in this catalogue are pictured with straps made of endangered or protected animal materials such as alligator or crocodile. These lots are marked with the symbol Ψ in the catalogue. These endangered species straps are shown for display purposes only and are not for sale. Christie’s will remove and retain the strap prior to shipment from the sale site. At some sale sites, Christie’s may, at its discretion, make the displayed endangered species strap available to the buyer of the lot free of charge if collected in person from the sale site within 1 year of the date of the auction. Please check with the department for details on a particular lot. (h) Handbags A lot marked with the symbol ≈ next to the lot number includes endangered or protected species material and is subject to CITES regulations. This lot may only be shipped to an address within the country of the sale site or personally picked up from our saleroom. Please note, Christie’s cannot facilitate the shipment of any lot containing python, alligator or crocodile into the State of California.

The term “hardware” refers to the metallic parts of the handbag, such as the buckle hardware, base studs, lock and keys and/or strap, which are plated with a coloured finish (e.g. gold, silver, palladium). The terms “Gold Hardware”, “Silver Hardware”, “Palladium Hardware”, etc. refer to the tone or colour of the hardware and not the actual material used. If the handbag incorporates solid metal hardware, this will be referenced in the catalogue description.

For all symbols and other markings referred to in paragraph H2, please note that lots are marked as a convenience to you, but we do not accept liability for errors or for failing to mark lots.

I OUR LIABILITY TO YOU

(a) We give no warranty in relation to any statement made, or information given, by us or our representatives or employees, about any lot other than as set out in the authenticity warranty and, as far as we are allowed by law, all warranties and other terms which may be added to this agreement by law are excluded. The seller’s warranties contained in paragraph E1 are their own and we do not have any liability to you in relation to those warranties. (b) (i) We are not responsible to you for any reason (whether for breaking this agreement or any other matter relating to your purchase of, or bid for, any lot) other than in the event of fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation by us or other than as expressly set out in these conditions of sale; and (ii) we

do not give any representation, warranty or guarantee or assume any liability of any kind in respect of any lot with regard to merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, description, size, quality, condition, attribution, authenticity, rarity, importance, medium, provenance, exhibition history, literature, or historical relevance. Except as required by local law, any warranty of any kind is excluded by this paragraph. (c) In particular, please be aware that our written and telephone bidding services, Christie’s LIVE™, condition reports, currency converter and saleroom video screens are free services and we are not responsible to you for any error (human or otherwise), omission or breakdown in these services. (d) We have no responsibility to any person other than a buyer in connection with the purchase of any lot. (e) If, in spite of the terms in paragraphs I(a) to (d) or E2(i) above, we are found to be liable to you for any reason, we shall not have to pay more than the purchase price paid by you to us. We will not be responsible to you for any reason for loss of profits or business, loss of opportunity or value, expected savings or interest, costs, other damages, or expenses.

J OTHER TERMS 1 OUR ABILITY TO CANCEL

In addition to the other rights of cancellation contained in this agreement, we can cancel a sale of a lot if : (i) any of your warranties in paragraph E4 are not correct; (ii) we reasonably believe that completing the transaction is, or may be, unlawful; or (iii) we reasonably believe that the sale places us or the seller under any liability to anyone else or may damage our reputation.

2 RECORDINGS

We may videotape and record proceedings at any auction.

We will keep any personal information confidential, except to the extent disclosure is required by law. However, we may, through this process, use or share these recordings with another Christie’s Group company and marketing partners to analyse our customers and to help us to tailor our services for buyers. If you do not want to be videotaped, you may make arrangements to make a telephone or written bid or bid on Christie’s LIVE™ instead. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, you may not videotape or record proceedings at any auction.

3 COPYRIGHT

We own the copyright in all images, illustrations and written material produced by or for us relating to a lot (including the contents of our catalogues unless otherwise noted in the catalogue). You cannot use them without our prior written permission. We do not offer any guarantee that you will gain any copyright or other reproduction rights to the lot.

4 ENFORCING THIS AGREEMENT

60 days from the date when mediation is initiated, then the Dispute shall be submitted to JAMS, or its successor, for final and binding arbitration in accordance with its Comprehensive Arbitration Rules and Procedures or, if the Dispute involves a non-U.S. party, the JAMS International Arbitration Rules. The seat of the arbitration shall be New York and the arbitration shall be conducted by one arbitrator, who shall be appointed within 30 days after the initiation of the arbitration. The language used in the arbitral proceedings shall be English. The arbitrator shall order the production of documents only upon a showing that such documents are relevant and material to the outcome of the Dispute. The arbitration shall be confidential, except to the extent necessary to enforce a judgment or where disclosure is required by law. The arbitration award shall be final and binding on all parties involved. Judgment upon the award may be entered by any court having jurisdiction thereof or having jurisdiction over the relevant party or its assets. This arbitration and any proceedings conducted hereunder shall be governed by Title 9 (Arbitration) of the United States Code and by the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of June 10, 1958.

10 REPORTING ON WWW.CHRISTIES.COM

Details of all lots sold by us, including catalogue descriptions and prices, may be reported on www.christies.com. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer’s premium and do not reflect costs, financing fees, or application of buyer’s or seller’s credits. We regret that we cannot agree to requests to remove these details from www.christies.com.

K GLOSSARY

auctioneer: the individual auctioneer and/or Christie’s. authentic: a genuine example, rather than a copy or forgery of: (i) the work of a particular artist, author or manufacturer, if the lot is described in the Heading as the work of that artist, author or manufacturer; (ii) a work created within a particular period or culture, if the lot is described in the Heading as a work created during that period or culture; (iii) a work for a particular origin source if the lot is described in the Heading as being of that origin or source; or (iv) in the case of gems, a work which is made of a particular material, if the lot is described in the Heading as being made of that material. authenticity warranty: the guarantee we give in this agreement that a lot is authentic as set out in paragraph E2 of this agreement. buyer’s premium: the charge the buyer pays us along with the hammer price.

If a court finds that any part of this agreement is not valid or is illegal or impossible to enforce, that part of the agreement will be treated as being deleted and the rest of this agreement will not be affected.

catalogue description: the description of a lot in the catalogue for the auction, as amended by any saleroom notice.

5 TRANSFERRING YOUR RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

condition: the physical condition of a lot.

You may not grant a security over or transfer your rights or responsibilities under these terms on the contract of sale with the buyer unless we have given our written permission. This agreement will be binding on your successors or estate and anyone who takes over your rights and responsibilities.

6 TRANSLATIONS

If we have provided a translation of this agreement, we will use this original version in deciding any issues or disputes which arise under this agreement.

7 PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will hold and process your personal information and may pass it to another Christie’s Group company for use as described in, and in line with, our privacy notice at www.christies.com/aboutus/contact/privacy and if you are a resident of California you can see a copy of our California Consumer Privacy Act statement at https://www.christies.com/about-us/contact/ccpa.

8 WAIVER

No failure or delay to exercise any right or remedy provided under these Conditions of Sale shall constitute a waiver of that or any other right or remedy, nor shall it prevent or restrict the further exercise of that or any other right or remedy. No single or partial exercise of such right or remedy shall prevent or restrict the further exercise of that or any other right or remedy.

9 LAW AND DISPUTES

This agreement, and any non-contractual obligations arising out of or in connection with this agreement, or any other rights you may have relating to the purchase of a lot (the “Dispute”) will be governed by the laws of New York. Before we or you start any court proceedings (except in the limited circumstances where the dispute, controversy or claim is related to proceedings brought by someone else and this dispute could be joined to those proceedings), we agree we will each try to settle the Dispute by mediation submitted to JAMS, or its successor, for mediation in New York. If the Dispute is not settled by mediation within

Christie’s Group: Christie’s International Plc, its subsidiaries and other companies within its corporate group. due date: has the meaning given to it paragraph F1(a). estimate: the price range included in the catalogue or any saleroom notice within which we believe a lot may sell. Low estimate means the lower figure in the range and high estimate means the higher figure. The mid estimate is the midpoint between the two. hammer price: the amount of the highest bid the auctioneer accepts for the sale of a lot.

Heading: has the meaning given to it in paragraph E2. lot: an item to be offered at auction (or two or more items to be offered at auction as a group). other damages: any special, consequential, incidental or indirect damages of any kind or any damages which fall within the meaning of ‘special’, ‘incidental’ or ‘consequential’ under local law. purchase price: has the meaning given to it in paragraph F1(a). provenance: the ownership history of a lot. qualified: has the meaning given to it in paragraph E2 and Qualified Headings means the paragraph headed Qualified Headings on the page of the catalogue headed ‘Important Notices and Explanation of Cataloguing Practice’. reserve: the confidential amount below which we will not sell a lot. saleroom notice: a written notice posted next to the lot in the saleroom and on www.christies.com, which is also read to prospective telephone bidders and notified to clients who have left commission bids, or an announcement made by the auctioneer either at the beginning of the sale, or before a particular lot is auctioned. subheading: has the meaning given to it in paragraph E2.

UPPER CASE type: means having all capital letters. warranty: a statement or representation in which the person making it guarantees that the facts set out in it are correct.

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IMPORTANT NOTICES AND EXPLANATION OF CATALOGUING PRACTICE IMPORTANT NOTICES

EXPLANATION OF CATALOGUING PRACTICE

º Minimum Price Guarantees

Terms used in a catalogue or lot description have the meanings ascribed to them below. Please note that all statements in a catalogue or lot description as to authorship are made subject to the provisions of the Conditions of Sale, including the authenticity warranty. Our use of these expressions does not take account of the condition of the lot or of the extent of any restoration. Written condition reports are usually available on request.

On occasion, Christie’s has a direct financial interest in the outcome of the sale of certain lots consigned for sale. This will usually be where it has guaranteed to the Seller that whatever the outcome of the auction, the Seller will receive a minimum sale price for the lot. This is known as a minimum price guarantee.

Where Christie’s holds such financial interest we identify such lots with the symbol º next to the lot number. º ♦ Third Party Guarantees/Irrevocable bids Where Christie’s has provided a Minimum Price Guarantee, it is at risk of making a loss, which can be significant if the lot fails to sell. Christie’s sometimes chooses to share that risk with a third party who agrees prior to the auction to place an irrevocable written bid on the lot. If there are no other higher bids, the third party commits to buy the lot at the level of their irrevocable written bid. In doing so, the third party takes on all or part of the risk of the lot not being sold. Lots which are subject to a third party guarantee arrangement are identified in the catalogue with the symbol º ♦.

A term and its definition listed under ‘Qualified Headings’ is a qualified statement as to authorship. While the use of this term is based upon careful study and represents the opinion of specialists, Christie’s and the consignor assume no risk, liability and responsibility for the authenticity of authorship of any lot in this catalogue described by this term, and the authenticity warranty shall not be available with respect to lots described using this term.

PICTURES, DRAWINGS, PRINTS AND MINIATURES Name(s) or Recognised Designation of an artist without any qualification: in Christie’s opinion a work by the artist.

In most cases, Christie’s compensates the third party in exchange for accepting this risk. Where the third party is the successful bidder, the third party’s remuneration is based on a fixed financing fee. If the third party is not the successful bidder, the remuneration may either be based on a fixed fee or an amount calculated against the final hammer price. The third party may continue to bid for the lot above the irrevocable written bid.

QUALIFIED HEADINGS

Third party guarantors are required by us to disclose to anyone they are advising their financial interest in any lots they are guaranteeing. However, for the avoidance of any doubt, if you are advised by or bidding through an agent on a lot identified as being subject to a third party guarantee you should always ask your agent to confirm whether or not they have a financial interest in relation to the lot.

“Circle of …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work of the period of the artist and showing his influence.

⇔ Financial Interest/Irrevocable bids Where Christie’s has a financial interest in a lot, Christie’s is at risk of making a loss if the lot fails to sell. As such, Christie’s may share that risk with a third party who agrees, prior to the auction, to place an irrevocable written bid on the lot and may receive compensation from Christie’s. Christie’s requires the bidding party to disclose to anyone they are advising of their financial interest in the lot. ¤ Bidding by interested parties When a party with a direct or indirect interest in the lot who may have knowledge of the lot’s reserve or other material information may be bidding on the lot, we will mark the lot with this symbol ¤. This interest can include beneficiaries of an estate that consigned the lot or a joint owner of a lot. Any interested party that successfully bids on a lot must comply with Christie’s Conditions of Sale, including paying the lot’s full buyer’s premium plus applicable taxes.

Post-catalogue notifications If Christie’s enters into an arrangement or becomes aware of bidding that would have required a catalogue symbol, we will notify you by updating christies.com with the relevant information (time permitting) or otherwise by a pre-sale or prelot announcement.

Other Arrangements Christie’s may enter into other arrangements not involving bids.

These include arrangements where Christie’s has advanced money to consignors or prospective purchasers or where Christie’s has shared the risk of a guarantee with a partner without the partner being required to place an irrevocable written bid or otherwise participating in the bidding on the lot. Because such arrangements are unrelated to the bidding process they are not marked with a symbol in the catalogue.

“Attributed to …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion probably a work by the artist in whole or in part.

“Studio of …”/“Workshop of …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work executed in the studio or workshop of the artist, possibly under his supervision.

“Follower of… ”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work executed in the artist’s style but not necessarily by a pupil.

In Christie’s qualified opinion, this object could be dated to the Kangxi period but there is a strong element of doubt. e.g. KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND POSSIBLY OF THE PERIOD JEWELLERY “Boucheron”: when maker’s name appears in the title, in Christie’s opinion it is by that maker.

“Mounted by Boucheron”: in Christie’s opinion the branded jeweller (e.g. Boucheron) set the stone into the mount using stones originally supplied to the jeweller by their client.

QUALIFIED HEADINGS “Attributed to”: in Christie’s qualified opinion is probably a work by the jeweller/maker but no warranty is provided that the lot is the work of the named jeweller/maker.

Other information included in the catalogue description “Signed Boucheron / Signature Boucheron”: in Christie’s qualified opinion has a signature by the jeweller.

“With maker’s mark for Boucheron”: in Christie’s qualified opinion has a mark denoting the maker.

Periods Art Nouveau 1895-1910 Belle Epoque 1895-1914 Art Deco 1915-1935

“After …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a copy (of any date) of a work of the artist.

WATCHES

“Signed …”/“Dated …”/ “Inscribed …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion the work has been signed/dated/inscribed by the artist.

“With signature …”/“With date …”/ “With inscription …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion the signature/ date/inscription appears to be by a hand other than that of the artist.

The date given for Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints is the date (or approximate date when prefixed with ‘circa’) on which the matrix was worked and not necessarily the date when the impression was printed or published.

Retro 1940s Removal of Watch Batteries A lot marked with the symbol ⊕ next to the lot number incorporates batteries which may be designated as “dangerous goods” under international laws and regulations governing the transport of goods by air freight. If a buyer requests shipment of the lot to a destination outside of the country in which the saleroom is located, the batteries will be removed and retained by us prior to shipment. If the lot is collected from the saleroom, the batteries will be made available for collection free of charge.

FABERGÉ

CHINESE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART

QUALIFIED HEADINGS

When a piece is, in Christie’s opinion, of a certain period, reign or dynasty, its attribution appears in uppercase letters directly below the Heading of the description of the lot.

“Marked Fabergé, Workmaster …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work of the master’s workshop inscribed with his name or initials and his workmaster’s initials.

e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL 18TH CENTURY

“By Fabergé …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion, a work of the master’s workshop, but without his mark.

If the date, period or reign mark mentioned in uppercase letters after the bold type first line states that the mark is of the period, then in Christie’s opinion, the piece is of the date, period or reign of the mark.

“In the style of …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work of the period of the master and closely related to his style.

e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND OF THE PERIOD (1662-1722) If no date, period or reign mark is mentioned in uppercase letters after the bold description, in Christie’s opinion it is of uncertain date or late manufacture. e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE BOWL QUALIFIED HEADINGS

e.g. A BLUE AND WHITE MING-STYLE BOWL; or The Ming-style bowl is decorated with lotus scrolls…

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e.g. KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE AND PROBABLY OF THE PERIOD

“Manner of… ”: in Christie’s qualified opinion a work executed in the artist’s style but of a later date.

When a piece is, in Christie’s opinion, not of the period to which it would normally be attributed on stylistic grounds, this will be incorporated into the first line or the body of the text of the description.

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In Christie’s qualified opinion this object most probably dates from Kangxi period but there remains the possibility that it may be dated differently.

“Bearing marks …”: in Christie’s qualified opinion not a work of the master’s workshop and bearing later marks.

HANDBAGS Condition Reports The condition of lots sold in our auctions can vary widely due to factors such as age, previous damage, restoration, repair and wear and tear. Condition reports and grades are provided free of charge as a courtesy and convenience to our buyers and are for guidance only. They offer our honest opinion but they may not refer to all faults, restoration, alteration or adaptation. They are not an alternative to examining a lot in person or taking your own professional advice. Lots are sold “as is,” in the condition they are in at the time of the sale, without any representation or warranty as to condition by Christie’s or by the seller.

Grades in Condition Reports We provide a general, numeric condition grade to help with overall condition guidance. Please review the specific condition report and extra images for each lot before bidding.

Grade 1: this item exhibits no signs of use or wear and could be considered as new. There are no flaws. Original packaging and protective plastic are likely intact as noted in the lot description.

Grade 2: this item exhibits minor flaws and could be considered nearly brand new. It may never have been used, or may have been used a few times. There are only minor condition notes, which can be found in the specific condition report.

Grade 3: this item exhibits visible signs of use. Any signs of use or wear are minor. This item is in good condition.

Grade 4: this item exhibits wear from frequent use. This item either has light overall wear or small areas of heavy wear. The item is considered to be in fair condition.

Grade 5: this item exhibits normal wear and tear from regular or heavy use. The item is in good, usable condition but it does have condition notes.

Grade 6: this item is damaged and requires repair. It is considered in fair condition.

Any reference to condition in a catalogue entry will not amount to a full description of condition, and images may not show the condition of a lot clearly. Colours and shades may look different in print or on screen to how they look in real life. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have received and considered any condition report and grading.

References to “HARDWARE” Where used in this catalogue the term “hardware” refers to the metallic parts of the bag, such as the buckle hardware, base studs, lock and keys and /or strap, which are plated with a coloured finish (e.g. gold, silver, palladium). The terms “Gold

Hardware”, “Silver Hardware”, “Palladium Hardware” etc. refer to the tone or colour of the hardware and not the actual material used. If the bag incorporates solid metal hardware this will be referenced in the lot description.

POST 1950 FURNITURE All items of post-1950 furniture included in this sale are items either not originally supplied for use in a private home or sold as collector’s items. These items may not comply with the provisions of the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 (as amended in 1989, 1993 and 2010, the “Regulations”).

Accordingly, these items should not be used as furniture in your home in their current condition. If you do intend to use such items for this purpose, you must first ensure that they are reupholstered, restuffed and/or recovered (as appropriate) in order that they comply with the provisions of the Regulations.

SYMBOLS USED IN THIS CATALOGUE The meaning of words coloured in bold in this section can be found in paragraph K, Glossary, of the section of the catalogue headed ‘Conditions of Sale’.

Please note that lots are marked as a convenience to you and we shall not be liable for any errors in, or failure to, mark a lot.

º

≈

º♦

∝

Christie’s has provided a minimum price guarantee and has a direct financial interest in the lot. See Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information.

Christie’s has provided a minimum price guarantee and has a direct financial interest in the lot. Christie’s has financed all or a part of such interest through a third party. Such third parties generally benefit financially if a guaranteed lot is sold. See the Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information.

⇔

A party has provided Christie’s with a bid to cover all or part of Christie’s financial interest in the lot and may benefit financially from such bid. See the Important Notices in the Conditions of Sale for further information.

Handbag lot incorporates material from endangered species. International shipping restrictions apply. See paragraph H2 of the Conditions of Sale for further information.

Lot incorporates elephant ivory material. See paragraph H2 of the Conditions of Sale for further information.

Ψ

Lot incorporates material from endangered species which is shown for display purposes only and is not for sale. See paragraph H2(h) of the Conditions of Sale for further information.

➤

Lot is a Non Fungible Token (NFT). Please see Appendix A – Additional Conditions of Sale – Non- Fungible Tokens in the Conditions of Sale for further information.

¤

◗

•

■

A party with a direct or indirect interest in the lot who may have knowledge of the lot’s reserve or other material information may be bidding on the lot.

Lot offered without reserve.

~

Lot incorporates material from endangered species which could result in export restrictions. See paragraph H2(c) of the Conditions of Sale for further information.

Lot contains both a Non Fungible Token (NFT) and a physical work of art. Please see Appendix A – Additional Conditions of Sale – Non-Fungible Tokens in the Conditions of Sale for further information.

See Storage and Collection pages in the catalogue.

❖

With the exception of clients resident in Mainland China, you may elect to make payment of the purchase price for the lot via a digital wallet in the name of the registered bidder, which must be maintained with one of the following: Coinbase Custody Trust; Coinbase, Inc.; Fidelity Digital Assets Services, LLC; Gemini Trust Company, LLC; or Paxos Trust Company, LLC. Please see the lot notice and Appendix B – Terms for Payment

by Buyers in Cryptocurrency in the Conditions of Sale for further requirements and information

φ

Please note that this lot is subject to an import tariff.

The amount of the import tariff due is a percentage of the final hammer price plus buyer’s premium. The buyer should contact Post Sale Services prior to the sale to determine the estimated amount of this import tariff. If the buyer instructs Christie’s to arrange shipping of the lot to a foreign address, the buyer will not be required to pay an import tariff, but the shipment may be delayed while awaiting approval to export from the local government. If the buyer instructs Christie’s to arrange the shipment of the lot to a domestic address, if the buyer collects the property in person, or if the buyer arranges their own shipping (whether domestically or internationally), the buyer will be required to pay the import tariff. For the purpose of calculating sales tax, if applicable, the import tariff will be added to the final hammer price plus buyer’s premium and sales tax will be collected as per The Buyer’s Premium and Taxes section of the Conditions of Sale.

© Christie, Manson & Woods Ltd. (2025)

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STORAGE AND COLLECTION PAYMENT OF ANY CHARGES DUE

SHIPPING AND DELIVERY

Specified lots (sold and unsold) marked with a filled square (■) not collected from Christie’s by 5.00pm on the day of the sale will, at our option, be removed to Christie’s Fine Art Storage Services (CFASS in Red Hook, Brooklyn). Christie’s will inform you if the lot has been sent offsite.

Christie’s Post-Sale Service can organize domestic deliveries or international freight.

Please contact them on +1 212 636 2650 or PostSaleUS@christies.com.

If the lot is transferred to Christie’s Fine Art Storage Services, it will be available for collection after the third business day following the sale.

Please contact Christie’s Post-Sale Service 24 hours in advance to book a collection time at Christie’s Fine Art Services. All collections from Christie’s Fine Art Services will be by pre-booked appointment only.

Please be advised that after 50 days from the auction date property may be moved at Christie’s discretion. Please contact Post-Sale Services to confirm the location of your property prior to collection.

Tel: +1 212 636 2650 Email: PostSaleUS@christies.com Operation hours for both Christie’s Rockefeller and Christie’s Fine Art Storage are from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm, Monday – Friday.

COLLECTION AND CONTACT DETAILS Lots will only be released on payment of all charges due and on production of a Collection Form from Christie’s. Charges may be paid in advance or at the time of collection. We may charge fees for storage if your lot is not collected within ninety days from the sale. Please see paragraph G of the Conditions of Sale for further detail.

Long-term storage solutions are also available per client request. CFASS is a separate subsidiary of Christie’s and clients enjoy complete confidentiality.

Please contact CFASS New York for details and rates: +1 212 636 2070 or storage@cfass.com CHRISTIE’S ROCKEFELLER CENTER 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 10020 Tel: +1 212 636 2000 PostSaleUS@christies.com Main Entrance on 49th Street Receiving/Shipping Entrance on 48th Street Hours: 9.30 AM - 5.00 PM Monday-Friday except Public Holidays

CHRISTIE’S FINE ART STORAGE SERVICES (CFASS) 62-100 Imlay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 Tel: +1 212 974 4500 PostSaleUS@christies.com Main Entrance on Corner of Imlay and Bowne St Hours: 9.30 AM - 5.00 PM Monday-Friday except Public Holidays

Tel: +1 212 636 2650 Email: PostSaleUS@christies.com

18/12/2024

Identity Verification Anti-money laundering regulations require Christie’s and other art businesses to verify the identity of all clients. To register as a new client, you will need to provide the following documents, or if you are an existing client, you will be prompted to provide any outstanding documents the next time you transact.

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Private Individuals

Organisations

• A copy of your passport or other government-issued photo ID. • Proof of your residential address (such as a bank statement or utility bill) dated within the last three months.

• Formal documents showing the company’s incorporation, its registered office and business address, and its officers, members and ultimate beneficial owners.

• A passport or other government issued photo ID for each beneficial owner and authorised user.

Please upload your documents through your christies.com account: click ‘My Account’ followed by ‘Complete Profile’.

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Scan to learn more about our sustainability goals and projects VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890) Coin de jardin avec papillons Price realised: $33,185,000 Christie’s New York, May 2024

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INDEX A Allori 24 Anguissola 38 de Arellano 42 B Bordone 13 Bosch 19 Botticelli 23 Boucher 44 Brueghel 5 Ter Brugghen 30 C Canaletto 8 Carlevarijs 45 Chardin 40 Coecke van Aelst 4 de Coter 17 D Dandini 35 Donatello 22 E Engebrechtsz 20 F Fernández 18 Forte 39 French, Late 12th/Early 13th Century 9 G Gentileschi 16 Ghirlandaio 12 Giordano 36 Govaerts 27 H Hals 28

I Isenbrandt 3 K Key 2 L Lawrence 7 M Master of Fossa 25 Master of the Hartford Still Life 33 Master of the Johnson Assumption of the Magdalen 10 Mendozzi 37 N Le Nain 41 O van Oostsanen 26 P Passerotti 14 R Ribera 15 Rijckaert 29 Roberti 21 S Lo Spagna 6 Stomer 32 Strozzi 34 T Teniers 31 V Veneziano 11 Vigée le Brun 43 de Vos 1

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