Old Masters Move at Sotheby's Auction

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Jan 30th 2010 at 7:01PM

Sotheby's reached the high end of its presale estimate for its Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture auction on Thursday. The sale was expected to generate between $38 million and $55 million, and the final result came in at $53.4 million. The top performer was "Jupiter and Antiope," a 1612 mythological scene by Hendrick Goltzius, though the $6.7 million winning bid failed to reach the low end of its presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million. The last high for this artist, though, was $1.5 million, set in 1996 when the art market was recovering following the burst of its early 1990s bubble.

Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Young Woman with a Black Hat" was also estimated at $8 million to $12 million, but the painting never made it under the gavel. The piece was withdrawn at the seller's request, Sotheby's told ArtInfo. He'd picked up the piece at a Sotheby's New York auction in January 2007 for $9 million, paying much more than the $3 million to $4 million estimate.

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