Sotheby's Old Masters Week: 25 January - 2 February 2013
Sotheby’s annual Old Masters Week auctions in New York will be held from 29 January to 2 February 2013, offering a wide range of works spanning the 14th to 19th centuries and featuring masters of the category including Goya, El Greco, Rubens, Turner, Tiepolo, Memling and Guardi, among others. The exhibition will be on view in our York Avenue headquarters beginning 25 January 2013. Our Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture sale on 31 January and 1 February 2013 will be highlighted by Susanna and the Elders (est. $6/9 million), a major work by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni from 1751, which was commissioned by Count Ernst Guido von Harrach of Vienna, one of the most important collectors of the day known for acquiring works by the best modern masters working in Rome.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes’ Portrait of Mariano Goya, The Artist’s Grandson (est. $6/8 million), was one of the last – if not the very last – of the artist’s portraits, painted during his final trip to Madrid between July and September 1827. The present masterpiece has been in the current owners’ collection since 1954 and has been out of the public eye for almost 60 years. This painting comes from the estate of Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos.
A strong group of Italian Baroque paintings from a Distinguished Private Collection include one of Pietro Testa’s last works, Aeneas on the Bank of the River Styx (est. $3/5 million), which is drawn from Virgil’s great epic, Aeneid. This large-scale painting highlights one of the central issues in our understanding of the artist – to what degree he was a classicist following closely in the tradition of Poussin or a wild-eyed genius pursuing his own path. The picture is inexplicably linked to his own tumultuous life and tragic suicide in March 1650, when he drowned himself in the Tiber.
The Old Master Drawings sale on 30 January 2013 offers works from the 16th to 18th centuries by French, Italian and Dutch artists. A major highlight of the auction is an important, early drawing by Rubens,Anatomical Studies of Three Male Figures (est. $700/900,000), perhaps the most powerful and dramatic of a group of fourteen anatomical drawings, which the artist is thought to have made with the intention of having them engraved as illustrations to an anatomy book. This significant and powerful drawing is an écorchéstudy of figures in tortured poses for an anatomical study.
OLD MASTERS WEEK CALENDAR OF SALES
Property from the Estate of Giancarlo Baroni Evening Sale – 29 January 2013 at 6.00 pm
Property from the Estate of Giancarlo Baroni Drawings Session – 30 January 2013 at 10.00 am
Old Master Drawings – 30 January 2013 at 2.00 pm
Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture –31 January 2013 at 10.00 am and 2.00 pm; 1 February 2013 at 10.00 am
Masterworks – 1 February 2013 at 11.30 am
Old Master and 19th Century European Paintings and Drawings, including Property from the Estate of Giancarlo Baroni –
1 February 2013 at 2.00 pm; 2 February 2013 at 10.00 am
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