OLD MASTERS SALES TOTAL: $6,314,616
New York – Christie’s May Old Master Week totaled $6,314,616, over two live sales at Rockefeller Plaza. There was lively bidding with participation from 25 nations in North, Central, and South America, Europe and Asia. Together, the two sales were 88% sold by lot and 81% sold hammer by low estimate. The bidding began on Wednesday 24 May with the second installment of Remastered: Old Masters from the Collection of J.E. Safra - Selling Without Reserve, which was 100% sold and totaled $3,277,143. The seasonal Old Masters various-owner sale took place today, Thursday 25 May, realizing $3,037,482.
Each sale produced one of the two top lots of the week. The top lot of the cycle came from the Old Masters sale, Giuseppe Vermiglio’s Caravaggesque interpretation of Christ before Pilate, which made $478,800. The Safra Collection offered the second most expensive lot of the week, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s landscape, Les hauteurs de Sèvres - Le chemin Troyon made $352,800. Other notable results from the Old Masters sale include: Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in armor attributed to Frans Pourbus, the Elder, making $277,200 and Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscape The tower of Kostverloren on the river Amstel, which brought $277,200. Other notable results from the Safra Collection are, Penelope awakened by Euryclea, a mythological scene by Angelica Kauffman that brought $214,200 and A landscape with a shepherd driving animals to pasture, a castle beyond by the French Rococo master Jean-Baptiste Oudry making $195,300.
