Rockefeller's Botticelli in Record-Smashing Auction Series
- February 03, 2013 21:45
Old Master and Renaissance art brought record prices totaling $170 million at Sotheby's and Christie's auctions in New York last week.
Christie's headliner was Fra Bartolommeo's "The Madonna and Child," from the mid-1490s, which brought $12,962,500 (including commission), in the middle of its $10 million to $15 million estimate.
Botticelli's "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist," went to $10,442,500, soaring above Christie's' $6 million estimate. Known as "the Rockefeller Madonna" for its 50 years in the collection of John D. Rockefeller, the Botticelli and Bartolommeo brought auctyion record for the artists.
Sotheby's' lead lot was Pompeo Girolamo Batoni's "Susanna and the Elders," a 1751 work estimated to fetch between $6 million to $9 million which went to $11,394,500.
Other top lots at Stoehby's were Fragonard's "The Goddess Aurora Triumphing Over Night," which Boston's Museum of Fine Arts acquired for $3,834,500, more than twice the low estimate, and rediscovered Hans Memling panel, "Christ Blessing," that brought an artist's record at $4.1 million.
