Top Prices for Old Master Paintings
Peter Paul Rubens and workshop
realized price € 558.030
Valerio Castello, realized price € 490.300
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino and
workshop, realized price € 421.300
Jusepe de Ribera, gen. lo Spagnaletto,
realized price € 398.300
The auspicious beginning of the Dorotheum Auction Week marked by the success of 19th century painting was followed by another exceptional auction of Old Master Paintings on 13th April 2011, which saw the auction hall filled to its limit. Significant appreciation and intense international demand characterised the sale of many of the paintings and the auction in general, with works by Peter Paul Rubens (and Studio), Jusepe de Ribera, as well as several Italian works enjoying the greatest success.
Rubens’ Christ Child with Infant St John the Baptist - from the collection of the aristocratic Genoese Spinola family - sold for 558.030 Euro, five times the original estimate (Cat. No. 423) while a mythological Rubens scene from the Paris Rothschild Collection ascended to an excellent 200.750 Euro (Cat. No. 425).
Bidding for Valerio Castello's Flight into Egypt continued up to half a million Euro. This large format represents an art-historical discovery, an earlier drought for this painting having been found in the collection of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, successor to the Habsburg throne assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. (Cat. No. 456). Jusepe de Ribera's impressive depiction of St John the Evangelist is based on an old legend and rose to 398.300 Euro, his recently discovered Jacobus the Elder an excellent 202.800 Euro (Cat. No. 481, 478). Guercino paintings regularly achieve top results at Dorotheum auctions. This auction was no exception, with bidding for a Young David with the head of Goliath finally coming to a stop at 421.300 Euro (Cat. No. 448).
At the end of the day, this had become one of Dorotheum's most successful old master auctions to date.
Download image: (to be used free of charge only for media reports on Dorotheum auctions) Photocredit Dorotheum Vienna
