Christie's NEW YORK IMPORTANT OLD MASTER PAINTINGS SALE THIS APRIL Christie’s New York annual Important Old Master Paintings sale takes place on April 19
and is expected to realize in excess of $50 million.
News-Antique.com - Apr 02,2007 - Important Old Master Paintings
April 19, 2007
New York - Christie’s New York annual Important Old Master Paintings sale takes place on April 19
and is expected to realize in excess of $50 million with a broad selection of Spanish, Italian, English
and Dutch masterworks. This is the second year in which the Important Old Master Paintings sale is to
be held in April, a change that has brought more balance to the international sales calendar for Old
Masters and appreciation from collectors.
Led by two Venetian views by Bernardo Bellotto and Canaletto, the sale includes an iconic El Greco
masterpiece, a striking Madonna and Child by Cima da Conegliano, the intriguing Rice Portrait of Jane
Austen, a tempestuous J.M.W. Turner mythological scene and over 40 restituted pictures from
collection of Jacques Goudstikker.
Venetian Views
Two fine Venetian views included in
the sale provide a fitting reference
point back to Christie’s New York’s
first ever April sale in 2006 where
Turner’s Venetian masterpiece
Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San
Giorgio sold for $35.9 million, a
record for a British painting at
auction. This year, The Grand Canal at
the Church of San Stae, Venice by Bernardo Bellotto (estimate: $8,000,000-12,000,000) and The Piazza
San Marco, Venice, looking towards the Procuratie Nuove and the Church of San Geminiano from the Campo di
San Basso by Caneletto (estimate: $4,000,000-6,000,000) will provide collectors an opportunity to bid
on two excellent 18th century Italian works.
The Bellotto is impressive in scale, and was
painted when the artist was a teenager. A
nephew of Canaletto, Bellotto used a far smaller
picture painted for the Duke of Marlborough by
his uncle and stamped his own persona on the
canvas. While the picture shares Canaletto’s cold
light, the juicy impasto is the youthful Bellotto’s,
along with the calligraphy of ripples in the water,
the texturing of the brickwork and the backlighting
of the boats and the figures. The Canaletto in the sale also was painted in the 1730s, the
decade when the artist produced his most characteristic work. Originally part of a set of four, this
image would undoubtedly be better known had it not been largely hidden from public view.
El Greco
This remarkable and mysterious painting, El Soplón (Boy
lighting a candle), carries El Greco’s signature and was
painted in Rome in the early 1570s (estimate: $5,000,000-
7,000,000). One of two autograph versions of this popular
composition, a number of early copies also exist, including
examples in the Uffizi in Florence and the Palazzo Reale in
Genoa. Of chief interest for El Greco was the dramatic
pictorial opportunities a flickering light illuminating a
single figure in the darkness allowed him. An interest in
the nocturne began to be developed in Northern Italy in
the 16th century, and El Greco was aware of the
experimentation of Titian and Jacopo Bassano – and this
particular work also foreshadows the candlelit scenes of
Caravaggio and his followers.
Cima da Conegliano
Giovanni Battista Cima was the youngest of the
