Old Masters

Christie’s June Old Masters sale features paintings and sculptures which trace the development of European art from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Highlights of the sale include a beautifully preserved Lucretia by Caravaggio’s contemporary, Orazio Borgianni; and one of only two known depictions of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. A gold Cristo Vivo by Gasparo Mola headlines a small but choice group of Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, which also includes marbles attributed to Giovanni Dalmatia and Giuseppe Mazzuoli. A strong selection of Dutch paintings is led by Salomon van Ruysdael’s View of Beverwijk, which was recently restituted to the heirs of Ferenc Chorin by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Further highlights include Ary de Vois’ striking Standard bearer; a masterful, large-scale guardroom interior by Simon Kick; and paintings by Simon de Vlieger, Gerrit Berckheyde and Salomon Koninck. Works of the Netherlandish and Flemish schools are represented by Jan van Hemessen’s ribald Bagpiper and Merry Wife, a landscape by Sir Peter Paul Rubens and a Lamentation by an early follower of Rogier van der Weyden. 

The eighteenth century features early genre paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and François Boucher; a view of European factories along the Canton River by Thomas Daniell; a marble allegorical bust of the Americas by René Frémin; and a set of six paintings depicting free people of color in the Caribbean by Agostino Brunias. We are equally pleased to present several works by women artists, including paintings by Clara Peeters and Artemisia Gentileschi.