New York Auction Prices Deemed a 'Vote of Confidence' for Old Masters

NEW YORK CITY

: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 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.