: Christie's auction of Old Master paintings was termed "a
fantastic vote of confidence" for the marketplace by department
head Anthony Crichton-Stuart.
The recent auction offered 192 lots with 146 selling, resulting
in a 76 percent sold rate and a final gross of $25,930,840.
The top lot at the auction was Giovanni Antonio Canal's "The
Bacino di San Marco, Looking East," which sold for $5.28 million.
"The Penitent Mary Magdalen Adoring the True Cross," Filippino
Lippi, tempera grassa on panel, $2.256 million.
The sales also included six new world auction records.
Filippino Lippi started the wave with the sale of "The Penitent
Magdalen Adoring the True Cross," at $2,256,000; followed by
Nicolas Lancret's "Le Menuet," $744,000; Giuseppe Recco's
"Arrangements of Flower Bouquets in a Majolica Vase," $508,800;
Agnolo Gaddi's "The Madonna of Humility with Saint Catherine,"
$486,400; Francesco Di Giotto Di Bondone's "The Crucifixion with
the Virgin," $464,000; and Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld's "The
Augustan Bridge on the Nera River," $441,600.
Other notable artists that sold well were Francesco Guardi and
his oil on canvas, "Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice," $2,144,000;
and Aert Van Der Neer's oil on panel of "Skaters on a Frozen
Canal by a Village," $632,000.
And an anonymous northern artist active in Rome sold for
$520,000. The painting, "Portrait of an Art Dealer," shows a man
who has now been identified as Francois Langlois. Langlois
(1589-1647), known as "Chiartres" after his native city of
Chartres, was an engraver, art dealer and publisher who lived in
Florence and Rome in the 1620s. In 1634 he settled in Paris,
where he opened a successful shop selling books and prints and
worked closely with many of the leading French artists of the
day.
All prices include a 191/2 percent buyer's premium.
