LONDON.- Marking the start of Classic Week at Christie’s in London, Old Masters Part I Sale realised £13,990,200 / $17,753,564 / €16,872,181, selling 156% over the low estimate. The auction was led by Anthony van Dyck’s Andalusian Horse and A wooded landscape which achieved £3,428,000 / $4,350,132/ €4,134,168. This ‘two-sided’ work captivated the interest of collectors and enthusiasts globally, not only with the artist’s first grand-scale depiction of a lone horse, but with an additional element of rarity and significance: his only surviving landscape in oil on the reverse of the original canvas. Elsewhere, the sale set a new world auction record price for a work by Francesco Hayez. The breakdown of buyers by region was: 71% EMEA / 7% APAC / 21% Americas.

This sale builds on the succeses of Old Masters in London in July 2024, which presented one of the strongest sales for the category at Christie’s London in over a decade.

Further top lots include:

Giambattista Tiepolo’s Guilty Punchinello which sold for £2,460,000/ $3,121,740 / €2,966,760, having been in the same family for almost a century, since 1934 (estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000). One of only two known paintings to depict Punchinello executed by the artist, this work’s pendant is at Leeds Castle, England.

Pieter Brueghel II’s The Sermon of St. John the Baptist which sold for £1,613,000 / $2,046,897 / €1,945,278 (estimate: £800,000-1,200,000). At auction for first time in well over 150 years, having been in same family since 1855, this is one of the finest treatments of Pieter Brueghel the Younger's most successful and popular large-scale religious composition.

Francesco Hayez’s Bathsheba which sold for £1,492,000 / $1,893,348 / €1,799,352 (estimate: £600,000-800,000). This museum quality work set a new world auction record for the artist.

Maja Markovic, Head of Old Masters Evening Sale, London: “This auction far exceeded the pre-sale high estimate and achieved the highest sell through rate by value to date for a Christie’s London Old Masters Evening Sale (98%). There was notable depth of bidding from institutions, as well as private and trade clients throughout. The results are a testament to the continuing desire for rarity, freshness to the market and discoveries across a spectrum of artists, genres and timeframes.”