Million-dollar no-name?
Rare double portrait with a mystery provenance
As the art market approaches the summer break the best auction houses have prepared something special for their collectors to close the first half of 2019 season on a high.
This is a short story with several unsolicited auction highlights that come to sale this week. To check out my previous auction reviews — please, visit my website or check out my Instagram and Facebook pages. More interesting art market notes will now appear in this Hidden Gem publication on Medium, so, please, consider subscription not to miss the new articles. To learn more about art collecting and how to navigate on this market — make sure to check up the Essential Guide on Art Collecting here.
Tomorrow is another day for the great day for Old Master art market. Evening sales at major auctions are always a celebration for this art segment and the one to take place at Christie’s London HQ has it all to become a no exception.
As always, I’ve selected some paintings to review as my personal highlights.
This work by Venetian Early Renaissance oil on panel immediately caught my attention when I first opened the auction catalogue. And this three word attribution— Venetian, Early Renaissance (the things a connoisseur eye defines in seconds even judging by a tiny thumbnail image) — is surprisingly almost everything we can say for sure about this artwork with a $1 mln as a high estimate.
This quite an intimate sized [13 1/8 x 17 7/8 in; 33.4 x 45.4 cm] double portrait with vague attribution was also selected as a sale highlight by Christie’s own curators. Why so?
Well, the case that makes it worth the asking price is the unusual and an extremely rare subject. This depiction of an Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (he was the one that proclaimed the famous Hagia Sofia cathedral in Constantinople, now Istanbul, as an Imperial mosque) with a local dignitary states the historically important fact of close relationship between former Byzantine empire and Venice.
Moreover, it is one of the very rare contemporary oil portraits of the Sultan in the European tradition (and the only one still in private collection). All this makes the subject of the painting drive the potential prices up. And it’s previous sale at Sotheby’s in 2015 for £965,000 kind of justifies the estimate.
And, of course, Early Renaissance Italian artwork in a quite a good condition is always a remarkable event on the market.
However, if not the subject, would it really worth it?
The painting is attributed as a workshop of Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507), a renowned painter of his epoch descending from a praised painter family of his father Jacopo and a younger brother Giovanni. The former is now considered as a much more prolific master (just remember his stunning portrait of Doge from the National Gallery in London), though it was all the opposite in the 15th century.
And there are actually two reasons for that. The main one is the historic development of artistic tradition in those times. Gentile was an important master of his Early Renaissance epoch in Venice and his painting practice was totally in line with the canon of those times. In the course of his later years Venetian art was actively adopting inventions of the High Renaissance period with way more lively face expressions, postures and overall look and feel of the portraits and historic subjects. His manner quickly became outdated and old-fashioned and no wonder that after his death his legacy was left in obscurity in favour of new genious masters like Giorgine, Titian and others. Giovanni had a chance to further elaborate his style and was way more in line with this new wave.
And a second factor was that only quite a few of his paintings survived in a good condition until nowadays. Could this double portrait in question now attributed to the workshop of Gentile Bellini be one of them?
The thing that I personally doubt here is the fact that it came from his proper workshop. The reason for such an attribution is that there is a proven fact that Gentile was the one sent to Constantinople as a Venetian cultural ambassador. There are also some other known Oriental drawings and portraits by his hand from that period. And the biggest deal here is that there is this famous portrait from the National Gallery in London that was commonly believed to be executed by the artist’s hand.
The sad story is that this portrait (initially painted on a wooden panel) was roughly transposed to canvas somewhere in the 19th century and was wildly overpainted in many parts (face included). That’s why it is now considered inappropriate to attribute this work to Gentile Bellini himself. Moreover, there are also some close similarities to sitters in artworks by other artists, like Marco Palmezzano (or for example, check out this double portrait (!) by Giovanni Cariani (?) previously attributed to Gentile Bellini). This proves the name of Gentile as the original author is not set in stone.
This thing and the fact that the double portrait at Christie’s seems to be painted by a completely different hand (look at the face close-ups below and the striking difference in strokes and paint application) make it quite unlikely in my eyes that Gentile had any chance to relate to this artwork to atrribute it as a part of his workshop.
The thing that is undoubtful here is that the one, who painted the double portrait, saw and maybe even tried to copy in detail the portrait of Mehmed II from the National Gallery. However, the hand of a less skillful artist and some lack of efffortlessness and self-confidence is quite evident here.
Other interesting missing piece is the second sitter to the left that no one happened to recognise so far. This may well be another indicator of a less distinguished artist behind the portrait.
So, in this case, an attribution to a “Circle of Gentile Bellini” (if not to a close follower) would be much more appropriate here. Though, of course, that would immediately affect the potential value for the reseller.
However, the main unique selling point here is the subject, the story and the fact that it was still undoubtely made in the late 15th century. In this case a more conservative attribution is not likely to drop the price that much.
Italian baroque painting immediately comes to mind when we think about any Old Master sale. Though this auction of 4 July 2019 is surely dominated by artists from the North of Alps.
There is this absolutely stunning piece from the left side of an altar triptych depicting a member of the De Rojas family by famous artist of the Early Netherlandish art epoch Hans Memling (c. 1430 -1494).
Another exceptionally rare artwork from the period still kept in the private collections.
Not long ago it was lucky to go through a thorough and careful restoration by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which helped to reveal the initial layers and restore original artist hand wherever possible after several earlier interventions in previous centuries.
The piece has a well-deserved estimate of $2–3 mln and is likely to exceed it considerably due to exceptional provenance, condition and rarity of the artwork.
The story and symbolism behind it is really fascinating so please, check it out here [upd. Dec 2020: looks like the auction house deleted the page due to this] as a part of Christie’s sale catalogue.
There are other two paintings on a way more affordable scale of the Evening Sale catalogue yet still remarkably brilliant works of art to add to decent collections.
Exceptionally good example of a Rembrandt studio painting (oil on panel, 26 x 19 ½ in.; 66 x 49.5 cm.) and a 16th century portrait of a lady with a dog (cute, isn’t it?) by Adriaen Isenbrant (oil on panel, 19 3/8 x 15 1/8 in.; 49.2 x 38.4 cm.) that opens the sale. The former is also an extreme delight to explore in a high resolution image, so don’t hesitate to do that to please your eye.
And, yes, of course, there are several exquisitely elegant Italian masters in the auction. Christie’s have prepared a beautifully designed story with detailed images on their own — well-worth checking it up here.
