At Sotheby's $62.1 million sale of Old Masters on Thursday, it was smooth sailing for the highest-estimated works of classic art as a magnificent mid-18th-century Venetian canal scene by Canaletto, "A View of the Churches of the Redentore and San Giacomo, with a Moored Man-of-War, Gondolas, and Barges," sold for $5.7 million (est. $5-7 million), the best price of the day. But while the loftiest end of the market elicited a frenzy of bidding, with all of the top 10 fetching more than $2 million, the international cadre of buyers were more discerning about the remainder of the inventory, and 40 percent of the works were bought in.
Lucas Cranach the Elder's oil-on-panel "Lucretia" (1509-10) brought in the auction's second-highest total, selling for $5.1 million, smack in the middle range of its $4-6 million estimate. Long dismissed from the artist's oeuvre but attributed to him since the early 20th-century, the portrait shows the suicide of the legendarily modest consul's wife following her rape by the king's son — which, according to Roman lore, brought about the fall of the Roman monarchy and the rise of the republic — was a favorite subject of the artist, and he is thought to have painted it at least 35 times. This particular example is a three-quarter-length portrait of the tragic figure, who stares sadly into the eyes of the viewer as she is stabbing herself in the heart.
Fra Bartolommeo's small panel of the "Saint Jerome in the Wilderness," which shows the solitary saint praying in woods, set a record for the artist when it hammered down at $5 million, three times the $1.5 million low estimate. Another record was set when European collector bought Simone Martini's gold-ground "The Virgin Annunciate" for $4.1 million (est $3-4 million). The small panel originally made up the right side of a small devotional diptych done by the artist of the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she would have a child, but the second painting has since been lost.
In an unexpected twist, Sotheby's Old Master drawings sale on Wednesday brought in $5.6 million — the highest amount since 1998 for the category — despite a buy-in rate of nearly 50 percent. The total was given a boost by the sale of "Portrait of a Young Man," attributed to Piero del Pollaiuolo, which was picked up by the J. Paul Getty Museum for $1.4 million (est. $300,000-400,000).