Art sales: $4.1m Martini stirs market

Old Masters were in the spotlight last week as the first major auctions of the year were held in New York, accompanied by some spectacular dealer exhibitions. International dealer Fabrizio Moretti presented a sumptuous display of Italian gold-ground paintings that seemed to touch a nerve.

Normally, gold-ground paintings are scarce at auction, but this year there was a bumper crop, most of which sold, led by a rare and only recently fully attributed painting of the Annunciation by the 14th-century Sienese artist Simone Martini, which sold for a record $4.1 million. The price, said Moretti, was to be expected for an example of Martini’s work in good condition, and not expensive compared with some contemporary art.

The sales included some choice Renaissance works. A drawing of a young man attributed to the Florentine Pietro Pollaiulo, which was being sold by the heirs of the British scholar and art magazine editor Denys Sutton, was snapped up by the J Paul Getty Museum for $1.4 million, double the estimate.

Private collectors seized the other two Italian Renaissance prizes – Fra Bartolommeo’s painting St Jerome in the Wilderness for $4.9 million, and a Madonna and Child tondo, which, since cleaning, is now thought to be partly by the hand of Botticelli. Cautiously estimated at $1 million, it sold for $4.6 million.

Early Northern-school masterpieces met with a more mixed reception. Lucas Cranach is riding a wave of popularity, and one of his more seductive portraits of Lucretia sold comfortably for $5.1 million. But one of the last paintings by Hans Memling in private hands was just too highly estimated at $6 million to find a buyer. A similar fate met a rare painting by the 16th-century mannerist Arcimboldo. Depending on which way up you hang it, it is either a still life of fruit, or a portrait. It sold 10 years ago for $1.4 million, and no one was prepared to meet the new $3 million estimate.

In some cases, sellers who were simply trying to get their money back were disappointed, perhaps because they had paid too much. In 2006, one had paid a record 825,000 – 10 times the estimate – for a still life by the 17th-century Dutch painter Simon Luttichuys. The next year, it appeared at the Maastricht art fair with a $4 million price tag; last week it went unsold with a $1.8 million estimate.

In what is now a very choosy market, one third of the works offered in New York were unsold, dragging the total for the week below expectations to $122 million. However, more sensibly priced masterpieces found buyers. A young lady playing a clavichord, by Dutch Golden Age painter Gerrit Dou, was covered with years of grime, but sold above estimate to dealer Johnny van Haeften for $3.3 million.

Staying with Holland, a charming family interior by Pieter de Hooch from Lady Forte’s estate doubled estimates to fetch $3.7 million; a portrait by Frans Hals from Elizabeth Taylor’s estate doubled estimates to sell for $2.1 million; and a jewel of a small portrait by the lesser known Thomas de Keyser was chased by dealers Jonathan Green and Otto Naumann before selling to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for a treble-estimate $1.5 million.

Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s heralded the success of French Rococo, a style epitomised by Fragonard and Watteau and popularised by Wildenstein in the last century. The stand-out example was an elaborately camp theatrical design for a tapestry commissioned by Louis XV from Charles-Antoine Coypel, which quadrupled estimates to sell for $3.5 million. “Most people haven’t heard of Coypel, but it’s a fantastic example of French Rococo,” said Christopher Apostle of Sotheby’s.

Similar in appeal, though less over the top, was a large decorative oil sketch, pulsating with grandeur, made by the late-Baroque artist Giambattista Tiepolo for a fresco commemorating the arrival in Venice of the French King Henry III in 1574. It says something about shifts in taste that, when this was last offered for sale in 1984, it was unsold at $1.5 million. Last week, it sold for $5.9 million.

Finally, 18th-century Italian view paintings proved their staying power. A Venetian view by Vanvitelli at Christie’s, which had been bought from London’s Richard Green gallery in 1979 for 45,000 was bought back by Green for $1.5 million (989,000), while at Sotheby’s, Lady Forte’s slightly later Venetian view by Canaletto, which she had bought at auction in 1986 for $360,000, sold for $5.7 million.