New York Old Master sales
January 6 2015
Picture: Christie's
The catalogues for Christie's and Sotheby's New York January Old Master sales have gone online. Sotheby's had theirs up long before Christmas; Christie's went up yesterday. Therefore, over the holiday, yours truly pressed refresh quite a few times on the Christie's website.
To be honest, though, when the Christie's sale did go online, I skipped through it mighty quick. There's a few nice things, including this depiction of 17th Century dentistry by Guido Reni at $1.2m-$1.8m, and a pair of Canalettos at $3m-$5m.
There's also an interesting painting attributed in full to Caravaggio, above, which, as the literature listing makes pretty clear, has variously been called both 'Caravaggio' and a copy right up until the most recent catalogue raisonné, by John Spike, who said it was a copy. In their catalogue note, Christie's cites the opinion of the Met's Keith Christiansen:
Keith Christiansen, who has closely studied the present painting, considers it to be among the finest of surviving versions, but notes that it is difficult to go beyond this judgment, given the picture’s condition. He notes that at this early date, when Caravaggio was working for the market, the artist may well have painted more than one version. For Christiansen, that in the Queen’s collection (Hampton Court) is the best preserved and the most convincing of the versions that he knows.
Not much of an endorsement. Here's the Royal Collection picture. It's better.
Christie's note continues:
Interestingly, the contours of the Queen’s Boy peeling a fruit line up precisely with our painting, suggesting that the two were made from a common design.
Or that it's a copy. Then the catalogue mentions an X-ray:
The x-radiograph of the present work (fig. 4) does not reveal any tracing, and primarily shows that Caravaggio built up the folds of the boy’s shirt with lead white.
An artist using lead white for the shirt? It must be Caravaggio. The estimate is $3m-$5m. And for that I'd expect a better catalogue note. Still, the note concludes with this roster of those who support, or supported, the attribution:
While its autograph status has been questioned by some over the past several decades, many scholars support the attribution to Caravaggio, including Sir Denis Mahon, Barry Nicolson, John Gash, Luigi Salerno, Mina Gregori, and Beverly Louise Brown.
Christie's, as is their habit of late, has a seperate 'Renaissance' sale, the highlight of which is a Bronzino portrait, with an estimate of $8m-$12m. This picture failed to sell in 2013 at $12m-$18m. It's still a little expensive, it seems to me. The cataloguing is interesting, as, doubtless in a bid for the 'cross-over' market, they're straining to make a contemporary resonance angle:
The reverberation of this golden age of portraiture [by the likes of Bronzino] haunts us even today in ways as varied as the original function of the older paintings. A celebrated artist who adapted the conventions and superficial appearance of Renaissance portraiture for her own ends is Cindy Sherman, whose History Portraits (1988-1990) ransack sources as readily identifiable as Raphael’s La Fornarina (Untitled 205) or as generic as Untitled 209, a portrait of a lady in an elaborate 16th-century costume who confronts the viewer with all the haughtiness of a Bronzino aristocrat. Naturally art using photography, or Sherman’s performance art version of it, lends itself to the appropriation of historical images, and with no post-war artist was this accomplished to greater effect than with Joseph Cornell, whose Medici Slot Machines were executed in the 1940s and 50s using printed reproductions of such paintings as the Portrait of Bia de Medici by Bronzino (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) (fig. 1), which gaze poignantly out at us from behind the glass, part devotional object, part arcade entertainment.
In fact, I think that's the point of the stand alone 'Renaissance' sales - they're meant to appeal to modern and contemporary buyers. Doubtless 'baroque' or 'rococo' wouldn't quite work in the same way.
Sotheby's has the richer sale, with a monochrome Van de Velde maritime picture at $2m-$3m, a study by Constable of Salisbury Cathedral also at $2m-$3m, a Ribera of St Paul at $600k-$800k, and a $3m-$5m Salomon van Ruysdael.
Regular readers may recognise the above St Joseph by El Greco, which is estimated at $2m-$3m; it's the picture I discussed in 2012, after it made £790k (inc. premium) in Bonhams, where it was called 'Attributed to El Greco'. I thought then that it looked 'right', and it looks even better now, cleaned. Will it matter that it's a relatively quick turnaround between the sales? It shouldn't. Someone's taken a brave punt, and it's paid off; good for them.
You can compare the pre-restoration image on the Bonhams website here. Despite the obvious ding, the picture is in fundamentally excellent condition.
Finally, Sotheby's has the below head study catalogued as by Van Dyck, estimated at $100k-$150k. It's a new discovery, and though I can only judge it from the image, I'd say the attribution is most likely correct. Indeed, I remember seeing the picture in a black and white photo once in the Witt Library, and making a mental note that it looked good - one for the 'sleeper radar'. But here it is, awake and looking shiny bright. It was previously attributed to Dobson. The condition looks excellent. The estimate is cheap.
Update - a painter writes:
When respectable art critics and auction houses attribute a ghastly painting, like this so-called Caravaggio to the man himself, I ask myself, 'did Caravaggio- for whatever reason, drugs, drink, or disease, go through a phase in his career, where he was no longer capable of imitating himself?'
Are great painters in fact capable of producing work without a single piece of correct anatomy or redeeming brush stroke?
Personally, I think not.
Perhaps they think it will 'clean up nicely...'
